


Call to Arms

by IronSparrow99



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Allen siblings, And they are so frustrating in season 1, F/M, Gen, It's just season 1 right now, Twins, because i ship them so hard, lots of friendships, one-sided Westallen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 02:47:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 44,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12695586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronSparrow99/pseuds/IronSparrow99
Summary: All Eleanor "Ellie" Allen wants in life is to be normal. She wants to keep her job, she wants to stay out of jail, and she wants to catch her mother's murderer. That's not too much to ask, is it?Apparently, yes, it is.When Ellie wakes up from a mysterious coma to find that both she and her brother possess a volatile mix of unnatural abilities, will she be able to step up to the plate and defend the people she loves? Or will the darkness finally swallow Ellie, once and for all?





	1. Life as I Knew It

My name is Ellie Allen, and I can safely say that I am normal – I always have been. It’s just that lately, normal has become more of a relative term than the world would have you believe.

The world around us is changing, and whether or not you may be aware of the change, there is no stopping it. And as the proverb goes, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

And that’s exactly what has been happening, even where you can’t see it. As the world changes, so do the people living in it. There’s a new kind of human emerging – actually, not a human. A meta-human. Just like any other human being, only with something…extra. Some might call it a superpower.

I’m one of the meta-humans. I work with a team of people like me to stop other meta-humans from destroying the world.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I need to start at the beginning.

My story starts on my very last day as a ‘normal’ human being.

And _that_ day started with the shrill ringing of my cell phone waking me from a peaceful sleep.

I roll over, blankets tangling around my legs as I groan into my pillow and blindly grope around for my phone, answering the call and balancing it against my ear. “’llo?”

_“Ellie!”_ the man on the other end of the line snaps. _“Where are you?!”_

“What?” I pick my head up off the pillow. “Joe, I’m not supposed to be at work for another…” I glance over at my bedside clock, then do a double take. The glowing numbers read 10:46 am.

“I – shit. Did my alarm not go off? My alarm didn’t go off. Shit. Goddamn it. Joe-”

_“Don’t give me excuses, El,”_ Detective Joe West says with no small amount of impatience. _“Just get here, now. I’ve got cases waiting.”_

“Yeah,” I mutter blearily, kicking the blankets off and stumbling out of bed. “Yeah, okay, I’ll be there in a minute.”

_“Good.”_ The line goes dead, and I set my phone down on top of my dresser. Quickly deciding that I didn’t have time to shower, I grab my glasses and a change of clothes and quickly change, smoothing down my hair as I collected my bag and forensics kit on my way out the door.

I burst through the front doors of the Central City police station about fifteen minutes later and just barely miss running into one of the only people in this world who doesn’t hate my guts.

“Barry!” I yelp, automatically grabbing his arm to steady us both before my brother drops one of the many boxes he’s carrying. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.”

“I must’ve left my reflective vest at home.” My twin brother, Barry Allen, offers me a small smile. “Wanna grab a box? I think they’re putting you on the Delancey case – I bet Singh would _love_ you if you finally closed it up.”

“I highly doubt that,” I reply but take one of the boxes out of his arms anyway, following him up the stairs. “Speaking of Singh, did he give you grief when I didn’t show up on time? I can go talk to him.”

“Nah, I’m good,” Barry denies, shaking his head. “Singh’s just crabby. He’s always crabby. I’ve gotten used to it by now.”

“Yeah, well, he doesn’t hate _you_.”

“He doesn’t hate _you_ either,” my brother argues.

“Debatable,” I smirk dryly as we enter the forensics lab, known around the precinct as the Allen Lab. I set the box of evidence down on my desk and reach around my computer to Barry’s workstation and snatch the cup of coffee off his desk.

“Hey!” Barry yelps. “That’s mine!”

I meet his eyes, take a large drink from the cup, and hold it out. “You want it back?”

“Ew, no.” Barry makes a face as he signs for the evidence and begins to unpack the box. “You’re gross, y’know that?”

“Ah, you know you love me,” I tease as I boot up my computer.

Barry doesn’t respond to that, and we soon fall into a familiar lull – keyboards clacking, machinery humming, and the occasional computer beep. I, for one, was alright with the silence, although to an outsider, it might have seemed a bit prickly.

See, Barry and I had a bit of an odd relationship – he was my brother, and I loved him, but in the search for our mother’s killer, I had done some very, _very_ stupid things; things which had caused a massive fight between Barry and I when we were eighteen. We eventually patched things up, of course, given that we now worked in the same room, but there was always going to be an unbridgeable gap between the two of us.

I’d long since accepted that as a fact. I was a scientist, that was what I did best. There wasn’t much I could do about it now.

“Ellie? El!”

I rip myself from my internal pity-party and blink at Barry, who was watching me expectantly.

And standing right next to him is Captain David Singh himself.

“Captain!” I yelp, sitting bolt upright and slamming my knee into the underside of my desk. “Ow. Damn it, that hurt.”

“Ellie?” Barry prompts gently.

“What? Oh. Yeah. Cap’n.” I look up and disguise my grimace as a smile. “Hiya.”

“Hello, Ms. Allen,” Singh sighs derisively and side-eyes me like one would a piece of dog crap before looking at Barry. “Mr. Allen, I need you and your _assistant_ to go over the evidence from the old Mardon brothers’ cases.”

“The Mardon brothers?” Barry asks skeptically. “Didn’t they disappear or something? We never caught them. I...I mean, that’s not to say that you can’t do your job, Captain Singh, but that the police force-”

I clear my throat before Barry can climb any further into the hole he’s dug for himself. “The Mardon cases are old. Is the evidence needed for court or something? Please, _please_ say it isn't for court. I hate court. It isn't for court, right?”

“It’s not for court,” Singh assures us with a slightly disturbed look. “We may have reason to believe the brothers have resurfaced. I need you to look through all the files and establish a pattern so we know what to look for this time.”

“Aye, aye cap’n,” I chirp, turning back to my computer and placing my hands on the keyboard before glancing over my shoulder. “Was that it?”

Singh just glares at me once more for good measure before nodding to Barry and sweeping out of the room.

“You know, I could talk to him if you want,” Barry offers a few moments later, breaking the relative silence that had settled around us. “I mean, you don’t deserve to be my assistant. You’re just as smart as I am, you’ve worked twice as hard-”

“Only because I was fixing my own mistakes,” I correct. “Barry, stop. I’ve told you before – nobody here is going to like me. You’re the prodigal son of the department, not me, and I’m okay with playing second fiddle.”

“Not you’re not.”

I look up from the box of evidence I’d been inspecting and find Barry’s eyes boring into mine. I hold his gaze for a long, tense moment before he looks down, staring intently at the tabletop.

“Thank you,” I whisper, returning to box. I slip on a pair of gloves and start pulling the evidence bags out and sorting them into piles: one for blood samples, one for other biological samples, one for fingerprints,  one for weapons, and one for everything else. “Come on, we’ve got some brothers to catch.”

Barry wheels his chair over, pulls a pile of evidence a little closer, and the tension in the room beats a hasty retreat.

* * *

 

Evidence processing is always a slow, boring process, no matter how smart we were; it was known to take an hour or two on single cases, let alone years’ worth of cases. The Mardon brothers – Mark and Clyde – had quite the rap sheet: bank robberies, grand theft auto, breaking and entering, and seven different kinds of assault. Their spree went back about five years, to just before Barry and I were hired; since then, we’d found a sort of pattern: the two would pop up with a handful of crimes every few months, and the crimes would escalate to a certain point before they suddenly stopped.

“My guess is they get scared,” I speculate, leaning back in my chair. “I mean, look at it. They haven’t gotten caught at all, but the reports say that they’re getting closer and closer and then…they just disappear.”

“They don’t seem like the type,” Barry disagrees. “I mean, look at all the blood.” He motions at the disturbingly large amount of bloodstained knives, fabric, guns, and other miscellaneous items. “Do they seem squeamish to you?”

“Point,” I grumble, rolling my eyes. I grab the slightly smaller pile of fingerprinted evidence and bringing it over to the scanner. “You wanna cross-reference my fingerprints with your blood? See if we can…”

“...match any cases, yeah,” Barry agrees.

“Are you two finishing each other’s sentences again?” a voice asks behind us, and I spin around to see Detective Joe West, who had been my saving grace for as long as I could remember, standing in the center of the lab.

“Because I thought you quit that years ago,” he continues. “It’s freaky.”

“Old habits,” I supply simply with a half-shrug. “Hey, at least we aren't talking in sync. That was even creepier.”

“I liked it!” Barry protests. “It was cool!”

“Yeah,” I huff, adopting a creepy, ghost-like tone. “ _Come play with us, Danny. Forever…and ever…and ever…”_

“Okay, okay, I get it!” He holds up his hands in surrender and turns to Joe. “Did you come to rag on us or did you actually have something?”

“I do.” Joe hands us each a file. “There was a robbery at a bank on 4th. Six people are dead and Singh wants you to take a look.”

“Crime scene?” I ask hopefully. Call me perverse, but I liked getting my hands dirty – a day without blood or guts or a dead body of some sort was a slow day.

“Crime scene,” Joe confirms, long-used to my antics. “Be in the car in five or you’re walking.”

I nod as he leaves the room, and Barry and I quickly set a few tests to run in our absence and gather our kits.

“Come on,” I tell my brother as we leave the lab and hit the lights. “Time to go save the day, right?”


	2. Lightning Struck

The crime scene was bloody, just as I’d hoped. Not as gory, because shootings were generally fairly clean affairs, but there were dead bodies, meaning that there was a veritable feast of evidence to get my hands on.

Joe’s department-issued SUV squeals to a stop at the curb and Barry and I grab our gear and duck under the yellow tape. We quickly split the scene into parts – Barry would canvas the outside of the bank, while I got the inside, and we quickly split up with our individual cases.

“Please tell me no one disturbed the crime scene,” I announce as I enter the bank lobby, immediately scanning the bloody corpse for details. “My job is hard enough as is without someone trampling on the corpse.”

“Your precious body’s fine, lab rat,” one of the officers calls. “Should we leave you two alone for a moment? You need mood lighting?”

“If you’ve got it, sure, but I much prefer UV,” I reply sarcastically. “And as for leaving me alone, yes, I’d greatly appreciate it if you did.”

The small crowd of cops shuffles away from the corpse, leaving me about a five-foot radius in which to work. I kneel down next to the body and flip open my case, beginning by jotting down basic notes: height, weight, possible age and such.

Snapping on a pair of gloves, I quickly begin swabbing and bagging samples, making mental notes as I went.

A few minutes later, Joe walks into the bank and approaches the body. “Whatcha got, Ellie?”

“Male, between 50 and 65, five-foot, eleven inches tall,” I rattle off. “Cause of death will be determined by the coroner, but my best guess is the bullet hole in his chest.” I stand and pull my gloves off, grabbing my camera and beginning to take photos.

“Judging by the placement of the body and the lack of drag marks, I’d say he was huddled back near the wall,” I continue, gesturing as I do so. “My best guess is that our shooter only shot this dude to make a point.”

“As an example,” Joe tacks on, and I nod.

“Right. Has anyone ID’d our shooter?”

“The teller gave a sketch,” the detective offers, handing over a piece of paper with a sketch on it. “Looks a lot like Clyde Mardon, doesn’t it?”

“That it does.” I grin, scanning over the face in front of me for telling clues. There was a small scar on his chin – it didn’t look like a deliberate wound, and I assumed that even criminals had to trip sometime.

“From what I’ve read from the other Mardon cases, they like to minimize deaths,” I comment. “Not because they’re squeamish, but because they’re, like, scary efficient. Which might be why they haven’t been caught yet. I mean, that’s not to say you’re bad at your job, Joe, I just meant that these particular criminals are smarter than your average criminal – which you _can_ catch, obviously, given that Iron Heights is-”

Joe silences me with a look, and I swallow my twisted tongue as I hand back the sketch and stuff my hands in my pockets. “Is Barry outside? With the other body?”

Joe nods slowly, still jotting down notes.

“Right,” I huff anxiously, quickly packing my stuff away and hurrying outside. I follow the cops milling around the scene to the center of the activity: a side alley with a second corpse, over which my brother was crouched, examining something on the pavement. I mutter a greeting as I plop down next to him.

“Hey,” he greets absently, studying some tire marks on the pavement. “Did you get anything big off the body inside?”

“He was shot as an example. Haven’t gotten a name yet, but I took samples to bring back to the lab. I mainly left before I could inadvertently insult Joe even more,” I murmur, scratching the back of my neck sheepishly.

“Rambling?” Barry asks.

“Rambling,” I nod. “So, what’ve you got out here?”

“Tire treads,” he responds, pointing out the skid marks on the pavement. “12 inches, asymmetrical tread.”

“They were made by Mustang Shelby GT500,” I announce. “They have an exclusive super-wide rear wheel.”

Barry nods, and I can practically see the cogs turning in his head as he takes in the new information. Blinking, he refocuses on the skid marks and narrows his eyes. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?” I ask, leaning over to see what he was pointing at – there were flecks of something within the skid marks themselves.

“Can you get me a test tube or something?”

“Um…” I quickly open my kit and take inventory. “I used all mine. The best I can get you is an evidence bag.”

“That’ll have to do,” Barry decides, and before I can protest, reaches down to swipe a gloved finger through the brown stuff – it looked soft, almost like clay.

Barry brings it up to his face and sniffs it. “Yep. Feces.”

“Oh. _Wonderful._ ” I pull a face – there were times I really didn’t like my job, and this was one of those times. I much preferred studying ballistics and trajectories. Still, I hold the bag open, leaning slightly away from it as Barry carefully takes his entire glove off and drops it in.

“I hope you know that you’ll be the one analyzing this,” I inform him as I hold out the bag.

Barry nods and quickly packs the baggie away, shutting his case just as Joe rounds the corner. “Did you two find anything else?”

“We found a…crapload of evidence,” I offer, lips twitching.

Barry elbows me in the ribs. “She means we found feces in the tire treads,” he clarifies, sending a half-hearted glare my way. “We’ll bring them – and everything else – back to the lab. We should have a lead by the end of the day.”

“Good,” Joe nods. “Let’s head back, then. We need to get to work. Mardon cannot – _will_ not – be getting away this time.”

.

Fifteen minutes after leaving the crime scene, I drag my case back into the lab, set it on a table, and Barry and I quickly head to our desk. I move both of our kits onto one of the lab tables and begin setting up the various machines I’d need. “Hey, before I forget, is the news saying anything about STAR Labs? I forgot to check this morning.”

Barry doesn’t respond, but even without looking up I can hear one of the monitors in the lab turn on to the news station we usually kept on.

_“…and we are less than five hours away from the moment we’ve all been waiting for: the activation of STAR Laboratory’s particle accelerator,”_ the news reporter was saying. _“The event has been marketed as the greatest leap in scientific advancement since NASA’s moon landing, and to many fans, the company truly does live up to its promise of delivering ‘the science of tomorrow, today.’”_

“It’s probably going to be better than the moon landing,” I predict over the sound of the mass spectrometer running, and Barry hums in agreement.

_“However, not everyone is in agreement with these advancements,”_ the reporter continues, and I glance up to see the screen switch to a shot of protestors outside of STAR Labs holding signs that read ‘DON’T TURN IT ON!’

I roll my eyes as I swap out one blood sample for the next, logging the results. “Plebeians,” I mutter under my breath. “Just because they’re afraid of progress doesn’t mean everyone else has to be stuck in the Stone Age with them.”

“It’s going to turn on anyway,” Barry points out, not even looking up from the microscope he was using to inspect one of the other samples we’d gotten. “Wells is going to go ahead with this, no matter what some picketers say.”

“I know that,” I acknowledge. “Still, humanity’s resistance to progress annoys the hell out of me.” I trail off as my computer dings, and I frown. “Huh.”

“What is it?”

“Speaking of progress, I think I found a way to find out where Mardon is,” I explain in a rush, sliding into my chair and quickly logging onto the CCPD system. “The Shelby – assuming that was the getaway car – has a top speed of 170 miles per hour. If I access the bank security cameras, then we can tell when they left the scene, and we can find out how far, hypothetically, they could have gotten thus far.”

“Which would narrow down the search field and mean that Joe and Chyre could find him quicker,” Barry adds.

“Right,” I nod, accessing the camera footage that had been subpoenaed from the bank immediately following the crime. I fast-forward to when the bank’s silent alarm had gone off – around 12:30 – and hit ‘play’,

I sit back and watch the screen, keeping my eyes locked on Mardon as he goes through Committing a Robbery 101 – threatening the teller and forcing the crowd back takes about five minutes, making his demands and doing the usual Villainous Monologuing took around fifteen; leaving the bank, confronting the security guards,  and shooting another man takes another seven. Finally, at exactly 1:08 p.m., Clyde Mardon leaves the scene, speeding off the frame and leaving nothing but skid marks.

“Yes!” I shout excitedly. “Okay, so it is now…1:55. That gives us a window of 47 minutes, and if distance equals speed times time then we have a radius of…” I scribble down a few calculations on a spare piece of paper. “133.1667 miles.”

Barry turns to his own computer and pulls up a map of Central City, drawing a radius with the bank as the center point. “That’s nearly all of the city.”

“ _Nearly,”_ I emphasize. “And if we’re basing this off their previous sprees, they’ve stayed in the city, at least for now, so we can eliminate a few parts…” I cross out the places where the radius spills over the city limits.

“That’s still a lot of area,” Barry points out grimly.

“I know.” I sigh frustratedly and lean back against my desk. “That can't be it. Like Joe said, Mardon can't get away this time.”

“He won't,” Barry assures me, his voice perfectly confident. “We're smarter than him. We're going to find him.”

“Than what do you suggest? ‘Cause I'm all out of ideas,” I snap, annoyed, as I cross my arms and curl my hands into fists.

Barry just stares at the map for a long, tense moment, and I'm just about to sit back down when he asks, “If you were a murderous bank robber, where would hide?”

“What?” I reel back. “Why me? Why not you?”

“Because out of the two of us, you're the most likely to go on a killing spree,” he tells me in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Thanks,” I drawl, but uncurl my fists and tap my fingers against my arm, focusing on the matter at hand. “Well...if I'd just committed the same crime that our pal Clyde did, then I'd probably go somewhere...rural. Edge of town. Police are going to be swarming the city within an hour of the robbery itself, so if I wanted to stay within the city, I'd head for an area with little to no police officers.”

“Like a farm?” Barry asks, a familiar glint in his eyes.

“Yes…” I respond cautiously. “Why?”

“Remember the feces I collected?”

“I couldn't forget it if I tried.”

“It wasn't human,” he explained excitedly. “My best guess is cow. And if was in the treads of the car – which the Mardons probably brought to the scene - then analyzing the sample…”

“...should lead us back to where the car came from,” I finish, a smile spreading across my face. “Great. How long should that take?”

Barry walks over to the spectrometer and inserts the sample, pressing a few buttons before looking back up at me, his mouth pressed into a flat line. “Three hours.”

“Wonderful,” I groan for the second time in as many hours, my spirits falling as I plop down into my chair.  

* * *

Here’s a piece of advice about science that they don’t tell you in high school or college or any other classes anywhere: science can be boring as _shit._ Sure, collecting information and connecting puzzle pieces was amazing, yes, but sitting around waiting for collected evidence to be run through a machine? Easily the most boring thing I’d ever had to do.

Three hours after Barry started the analysis of the feces, the lab was nearly dead; Barry and I had completed profiles on both of the victims and run them downstairs, letting the detectives get started on tracking down the grieving families. However, that meant that we had nothing else to do – all of the samples from the previous Mardon cases had been wrapped up, and the current case had taken precedence all morning. All of this simply lead to one conclusion: I. Was. So. _Goddamn._ Bored.

I was just beginning my 43rd attempt at solving the 5x5 Rubix Cube I kept on my desk when the monotony was broken by a familiar face walking through the door.

“Iris!” I jump out of my chair, setting the Cube down and hugging Iris West, my best friend and sister in all but blood. “You have _no idea_ how glad I am to see you.”

“What, is life too boring without me?” she teases, hitching a hip up onto the corner of my desk.

“Absolutely,” I deadpan, lips twitching. “I’ve been running tests on literal crap all morning.”

“Sucks to be you,” she sing-songs with a laugh. “Aren't you supposed to be used to it by now?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” I sigh dramatically, then shake my head. “In all seriousness, there was a shooting earlier and we’re still waiting on the results, which means we might not be able to make it to the demonstration.”

“Aw, that sucks,” Iris pouts. “When will you know one way or the other?”

I glance at the clock. “Right about…now.” As if on cue, Barry’s computer beeps, a message popping up on the screen. “Barry, you wanna get that?”

No response.

“Barry? Barry!” I shout, snapping my fingers in front of my brother’s face. Barry quickly tears his gaze away from Iris, whom he’d definitely _not_ been staring at like a lovesick puppy.

“Sorry, what?”

“Your computer?” I prompt, pointing at the machine behind him. “D’you wanna see what the poop has to tell us?”

“Uh, sure. Iris, you look…amazing,” Barry stammers as he turns to the computer. I resist the urge to roll my eyes.

Iris, however, remains completely oblivious as she scoffs. “Yeah, right. I literally just threw this on because the new guy spilled coffee all over me.”

“Don’t discredit yourself.” I move around my desk to Barry’s side, standing on my tip-toes to peer over his shoulder. “Is that the molecular breakdown? What’s the second-to-last one? It seems familiar.”

“It’s oxytetracycline,” Barry informs me. “An antibiotic used in chicken and cow feed to fight off infections.”

“The farm we’re looking for used it in their feed,” I realize. “We can use feed distribution centers to trace feed that both uses OXT _and_ goes to Central City.”

Barry nods and gets to work, fingers flying over the keyboard as he tracks down major distribution centers in the area.

“Do I need to leave you two alone?” Iris asks from behind me, sounding half-serious. “I can come back later.”

“No, stay,” I call over my shoulder. “We’re almost done.” Turning back to the monitor, I ask, “Does that narrow it down any?”

“Let’s find out.” He presses a key and the list of feed orders going to Central City is condensed to only four, all of which have oxytetracycline highlighted in the ingredients list. “I’d say it does.”

“Right?” I smirk. “Gotcha, Mardon.” I quickly write down the names and addresses of the four farms and move back to my desk, grabbing my bag. “Now we just run this downstairs to Joe and we should be off the hook.”

“And free to go to the demonstration at STAR Labs,” Barry interjects eagerly. “We might even get to see the particle accelerator turn on!”

I grin, but Iris just looks vaguely exasperated. “What’s so important about the particle accelerator, anyway?”

“It’s going to exponentially expand the collective knowledge of the human race,” I enthuse as we make our way out of the lab. “It’s like…like an iceberg,” I explain. “Imagine the tip of the iceberg – that’s what we know about molecular science _right now_.” I pause to see Iris nodding along with the analogy.

“And then the rest of the iceberg – the submerged part – is what we haven’t learned yet. It’s what the particle accelerator will be able to show us,” I explain, bouncing down the last two steps and onto the main floor of the precinct.

“Sounds…enlightening,” Iris offers.

I just grin and approach Joe’s desk, where the detective himself was pouring over security camera footage from the bank.

“We’ve got a lead on Mardon,” I announce, dropping the paper on the desk. “The fecal matter we recovered from the scene belong to a cow that had ingested OXT, or oxytetracycline.”

“And that is a list of all the farms in Central City that still use oxytetracycline in their feed,” Barry continues. “I’ll bet you’ll find a sweet Shelby at one of them.”

Joe laughs and shakes his head. “You two never cease to amaze me, you know that?”

“Well, Dad,” Iris pipes up, leaning against the desk, “now that Barry and Ellie have done your poop science, you think you can let them go to STAR Labs?”

Joe opens his mouth as if to protest, but then he catches sight of the triple-doe-eye Barry, Iris and I were throwing his way. He’d never been able to resist it.

“Fine,” he sighs, admitting defeat. “Go.”

“Yes!” I whoop, darting forward to give Joe and a quick hug before taking off out the door. “Come on, come on, come _on!”_

“Slow down,” Barry chuckles, follow me outside and holding the door for Iris. “It’s not a race.”

“Yeah, but I’ll get a better view of the podium,” I taunt, hurrying down the sidewalk. “Come on!”

* * *

STAR Labs – or Scientific and Technological Advanced Research Laboratories – was located in the middle of downtown Central City, its skyscraper dominating the skyline. It could be counted on to be busy on any given day, but that was nothing compared to the crowd that had gathered around the building tonight.

The building was buzzing with activity; citizens, scientists, security guards and the press were all milling around in the main lobby, but the three of us manage to fight our way through the crowd just as Dr. Harrison Wells, head of STAR Labs, steps up to the podium.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he greets as the crowd quiets down. “I wanted to thank each and every one of you for choosing to come out tonight to witness this wonderful advancement to the scientific world.”

The crowd cheers and Wells waits for everyone to quiet down again before continuing.

“It has always been the dream of those of us at STAR Labs to bring the common people advancements in science and technology that no one would ever see possible,” he announces. “The particle accelerator is a shining example of this idea – it will change the way we think about physics, medicine, and power itself. It will bring about the future of the world – and, trust me, the future will be here faster than you think.”

The room erupts into deafening applause, cameras flashing all over the room. I look over at Barry to see him clapping along like the rest of the room, but his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes and every once in a while he’d shoot Iris a forlorn glance.

I knew that look – that look meant Barry had tried to tell Iris how he felt, again, and he’d been turned away…again.

I sigh reach over to squeeze his arm. When he looks over at me, I raise an eyebrow in a silent question, not wanting to shout over the crowd. Barry blinks, nods, and gives me a genuine smile, returning the squeeze in an assurance that he was alright.

Letting the matter drop, I turn back to the podium, where Dr. Wells was now answering questions, just as a shout comes from the front of the crowd and a man bursts out of the crowd, running past the three of us and snatching Iris’ bag as he does so.

“My laptop!” she shouts. “It’s got my dissertation!”

Barry, in all his noble stupidity, takes off after the thief, shoving his way through the crowd. I turn to Iris and make sure she was okay before taking off in pursuit, not even sure what I was going to do if I caught the guy.

I needn’t have worried, however – I round a corner in the parking lot and nearly run into Barry, who was leaning against a wall, short of breath. I skid to a stop by his side, panting and bracing my hands on my knees.

“You okay?” I ask worriedly. “Are you having an asthma attack again? Where’d the guy go?”

Barry sucks in a deep breath, shakes his head to signify that no, he was fine, and points down the alleyway.

I straighten up and get ready to chase after the thief, given that he wasn’t long gone by now, when another voice stops me in my tracks.

“Police! Freeze, unless you wanna find out what a bullet feels like.”

_Good,_ a little voice in my head whispers. _Let the cop handle this. It’s his job, not yours._

“Yeah,” I huff. I lean back against the wall, willing my heart to stop pounding. Between Barry and I, I knew that I had a slightly better chance of catching anyone on foot, but neither one of us was particularly athletic.

My thoughts are cut off by Iris making her way around the corner. “Ellie! Are you okay? Did you catch the guy?”

“He’s over there with a cop.” I point to the end of the alley. Iris leaves, and I turn to my brother. “Can we go home now?”

“I might’ve left my jacket at work,” Barry admits sheepishly. “And it looks like it’s gonna rain, so…”

“…so back to work it is,” I surmise, pushing off the wall. “Alright, c’mon.”

Barry nods and follows me out.

Just as we were leaving STAR Labs, raindrops begin to fall, true to Barry’s word, and by the time we reach the CCPD it’s progressed to a full-on torrential downpour.

I duck inside the building with Barry hot on my heels. I shake my hair out like a dog, waving to the night shift security guards as we make our way up to the lab.

I unlock the door to find about an inch of water on the floor. “Goddamn it, Barry, did you leave the skylight open again?”

“I didn’t know it was going to rain!” he protests, slogging through the water to make sure his computer was okay as I do the same.

“The janitor’s going to kill us,” I mutter as I put my computer through safe shutdown procedures. “Come on, grab your jacket and let’s go. I want to actually get some sleep tonight.”

“Yeah, lemme just close this,” he mutters, grabbing onto the chain that would close the skylight. Overhead, thunder roars, and I suddenly get the feeling that something bad was coming.

I move towards Barry, placing a hand on his back. “Barry, we should-”

I’m interrupted for the second time that night by a deafening roar that seems to come from just above our heads. The air around us suddenly seems charged and the smell of ozone burns my nostrils as a blinding flash of light erupts within the room, sending me flying back across the room.

The last thing I’m aware of is an explosion of pain in my head just before the world sinks into an everlasting blackness.

 


	3. New Faces & New Places

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Is anyone actually reading this story? If you are, please tell me what you think! Comments keep me going!

For what might have been forever, I remember only vague things.

My world was reduced to an endless sea of black, penetrated only by excruciating bursts of pain and snippets of frantic sound.

_“-we’re losing her!”_

_“-don’t know how she’s still alive-”_

_“-brain activity is off the charts-”_

_“She’s seizing! I need a doctor here-”_

I was surrounded by the oddest feeling in the world; it was like I was alive and existed and didn’t at the same time. Looking back, I’d imagine that’s what an unborn baby feels like – surrounded by darkness, not knowing where you are and having no clue that your world is about to reshape itself like a block of wet clay.

(I now understood why the first thing babies did was cry – it was out of fear of having everything they’d ever known ripped away in the blink of an eye.)

Speaking of the world, mine pieced itself back together slowly.

My first thought beyond the darkness was _I can’t breathe,_ quickly followed by _oh my god, am I dead? I’m probably dead. I don’t want to be dead!_

“Oh my god, she’s awake!”

_Wait – no – who is that? Are they dead too?_

“Just calm down, please, stop struggling-”

_I can’t, I still can’t breathe, I don’t know who you are-_

“Cisco, get me the extubation equipment and find Dr. Wells!”

_Oh my god more people, I don’t know who you are – where am I? Did I get kidnapped?! Oh my god-_

“Ellie, calm down or I’ll have to sedate you again!”

_Wait,_ I blink dumbly. _Who are you, and how do you know my name?_

“Calm down,” the voice repeats soothingly. “You’re alright, I promise. Just calm down and we’ll get the intubation tube out of your throat.”

Still vaguely confused, I slowly open my eyes and a face swims into focus. It was a girl with auburn hair and soft brown eyes – she was wearing a lab coat and was watching me with a studious expression.

“We had to intubate you because you weren’t breathing on your own,” she explains, moving around what I now realized was a hospital bed – was I in the hospital? How did I get here? – and checking various monitors. “Your vitals look good. Your heart rate is a bit high, but that could just be the shock – it must be a shock for you, I mean, it’s been quite a while…”

Growing more confused by the second, I try and ask what she meant – or maybe who she was in the first place – but all that escapes my lips is a strangled little wheeze.

“Don’t try and talk,” the girl – a doctor or nurse, I was assuming – warns. “Your vocal cords may be atrophied – Cisco, where is that equipment!”

I rear back as much as I could at the sudden change in tone, but before I can do anything else a cart rattled into the room, pushed by a tan-skinned guy with long dark hair.

“I’m here, I’m here,” he replies. “Hey, she’s awake! How you doin’?”

I just give him a vaguely scared look – I had no clue who this guy was. I had no clue where I was. I had no clue where _Barry_ was-

_Barry._

A second wave of panic crashes over me as I realize that I had no clue where my brother was, or if he was even alive. I remembered the flash of light, my hand on his back, but nothing after that. Where was Barry now?

I look up at the woman that was preparing her equipment and begin to ask a question, but before I can, she sets to work. After some slight preparations, she turns to me with gloved hands.

“I’m going to pull out the intubation tube now, okay? This may be uncomfortable.”

Unable to nod, I can only blink a few times before she begins to slowly pull on the tube.

The intubation tube climbs out of my throat with a sickening squelching sound, leaving me able to breathe but almost unable to speak.

“Here,” the doctor offers, holding out a cup. “Ice chips. I’m not sure how you’d handle liquids right now.”

I nod and take a chip with a shaking hand, balancing it on my tongue where it quickly melts. After two more ice chips, my tongue is finally loose enough to speak.

“Who are – I don’t – will someone explain what is going on?” I croak, surprised at the sound of my own voice – it was rough and gravely, deeper than it had ever been.

“You’re at STAR Labs,” the doctor explains. “My name is Dr. Caitlin Snow, and over there is Cisco Ramon, a mechanical engineer. We’ve been taking care of you for the past few months.”

“What about Barry?” I ask hoarsely. “Where’s my brother?”

“Barry? He’s just in the other room-”

“I need to see him,” I rasp, the panicked feeling not fading from my chest. “Please. I need to know he’s okay.”

The doctor – Dr. Snow – hesitates for a moment, glancing back at her counterpart for a moment before slowly nodding and excusing herself from the room, which left me and Mr. Ramon awkwardly staring at one another until I clear my throat.

“Mr. Ramon-”

“Dude, it’s Cisco,” he interrupts me quickly. “You can call me Cisco. I’ve stalked your Facebook page, I think we can be on a first-name basis with each other.”

“You’ve…stalked…my Facebook page?” I ask haltingly. “I – why?”

“Well, it’s been a few months,” he explains awkwardly. “I just didn’t want it to be creepy when you woke up. Did you really go to MIT? ‘Cause that’s awesome.”

I don’t answer, stunned into silence. After a moment, however, the silence is broken by the sound of movement by the door and I turn to see the most familiar face in the world.

“Barry,” I croak, voice breaking. Dr. Snow wheels Barry over – he was in a wheelchair, a fact which didn’t help my panic much at all – to the side of my hospital bed. I lean down, mindful of the IV sticking out of my arm, and wrap my brother in as tight a hug as I dared. “Barry…”

“It’s okay,” he murmurs in a voice just as hoarse as mine, meaning he’d been under intubation too. “I’m okay.”

I let out a relieved sigh as the panic finally ebbs from my system. “Are you sure? Why are you in a wheelchair?”

“I feel fine,” he shrugs, “but she insisted.” He points at Dr. Snow, who doesn’t look the least bit apologetic.

“Well, I find it best to air on the side of caution, Mr. Allen,” a new voice speaks up, and I look up, blink, and do a double take.

Standing – er, sitting? – in the doorway was none other than Harrison Wells…except in a wheelchair.

There were a million things I could’ve said in that moment. I could’ve gone with “It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” or maybe, “Can you please explain what’s going on?” or even a simple, “Dr. Wells.”

Instead, what spills out of my mouth is, “I _swear_ you could walk the last time I saw you.” Immediately following that, I wince, heat rising to my cheeks. _Foot, meet mouth._

Dr. Snow pauses in securing a blood pressure cuff on my arm. “Has your brain been affected at all? Do I need to run more EKG scans?”

“No, she’s always like this,” Barry jokes from beside me. I give him a weak glare, but not much else – the shock of everything hadn’t quite faded yet, even though I didn’t know what ‘everything’ was yet.

Luckily for me, Dr. Wells doesn’t seem fazed by my brazen comment, and Barry lifts his head to address the man head-on.

“What happened? How did we get here?”

“What do you remember?” Wells asks curiously, wheeling himself further into the room.

“We were at the expo for the particle accelerator,” Barry offers, shifting in his seat. “I forgot my jacket at work, so we headed back in.”

“It was raining,” I add.

“Right,” Barry agrees. “I remember trying to close the skylight, and then there was an explosion-”

“There was?”

“Yeah…” Barry gives me a confused look. “You didn’t see it?”

I cast my mind back to the night in question before frowning. “I think I _heard_ it,” I announce. “But then there was just a huge flash of light and it was like everything just went…boom,” I finish lamely.

“An apt description, Ms. Allen,” Wells says wryly. “That explosion was the particle accelerator – and my life’s work – going up in flames.”

“Oh…” I gape. “What – what happened?”

“The accelerator became unstable,” Dr. Snow explains quietly. “It was unable to handle the stress and exploded, releasing a wave of quantum energy into the sky.”

“That energy then formed a thundercloud,” Wells continues, “which then formed a lightning bolt…”

“…which struck us,” I finish. “So, wait. You’re telling me that not only did we get struck by lightning – which is crazy in and of itself – but we got struck by _radioactive_ lightning?”

Wells hesitates slightly before answering. “Not exactly, but in basic terms, yes.”

“Great,” I sigh, glancing over at Dr. Snow. “Are there any side-effects? Am I gonna shoot lasers out of my eyes or something?”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything…abnormal,” she explains hesitantly. “Your vitals both seem fine…in fact, they’re almost _too_ fine.”

“What do you mean?” I ask anxiously.

“It’s nothing,” she quickly backpedals. “It’s just that…after all these months, you shouldn’t be able to sit up, let alone feel up to walking around.” She seems to direct that last part more at Barry than me. “But other than your oddly good vitals, nothing abnormal seems to be happening.”

“So we can go?” Barry asks eagerly.

“Not so fast,” Wells admonishes. “You’ve been in a coma for nine months.”

The world seems to stop turning as I focus entirely on Wells as his words begin to sink in.

“A…a coma?” Barry sputters.

“For _how long?!_ ” I yelp. “My friends, my family…do I still have a job? Or – or an apartment? Shit, my lease is probably up by now,” I babble. “I’m gonna have to move, and I’ll probably need a new job, and-”

I’m stopped by someone giving my hand a gentle squeeze, and I look over to see Barry giving me a worried look. “We’ll figure it out, okay?”

“Detective West and his daughter have been very consistent over these past few months,” Wells offers. “And I think you’ll find they have kept your affairs in order. They seem like special people.”

“Iris visited a lot,” Cisco informs us. “And she’s hot.”

I whip my head around to glare daggers at the engineer. “Watch it.”

Cisco quickly backs up, raising his hands in surrender. I turn back to Wells, another question coming to mind.

“Do they know we’re awake?”

“Not yet,” Dr. Snow tells us regretfully. “We didn’t want to overwhelm either of you, and I didn’t know if you’d have any further problems as far as the coma went. But they’ve been alerted now and should be on their way any moment now.”

I nod, and then pause to glance at Barry – both of us were still dressed only in hospital gowns. “Er, can we get dressed now?”

“Of course.” Wells nods. “Cisco, would you please get some clothes for our guests? And Caitlin, if you could assist Ms. Allen if she needs your help?”

“I don’t need help,” I argue just as Caitlin agrees and leaves the room, returning a moment later with a wheelchair and a bundle of clothes.

“Don’t be stupid,” she scolds me. “You just woke up from a coma half an hour ago. You are in no shape to be up and running around.”

I narrow my eyes at her, but she only does the same in return – after a brief staring match, I concede with a grumble and allow her to carefully unhook all of the monitors and IVs. Dr. Snow then sidles the wheelchair up to the bed, carefully helping me transition from one to the next.

“Do you need my help in the bathroom?” Dr. Snow asks with the grave seriousness that only a doctor can use.

“Er, no.” I shake my head frantically. “I can manage, Doctor-”

“Call me Caitlin,” she requests, and I nod just as she pulls me to a stop in front of the bathroom.

“Are you sure you don’t need help?”

“I’m fine,” I grunt, pushing myself up and out of the wheelchair, bracing myself on shaky legs. They may not be atrophied, but they were sorely unused over the past few months. Still, I use the wall to ease myself up and grab the door to the bathroom, taking the clothes from Dr. Snow – Caitlin – and stepping into the bathroom.

Once the door is locked, I quickly shed the paper-thin hospital gown, stretching out my stiff limbs as I move around. As I turn to grab the clothes Caitlin had given me, I catch a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror across from the sink and stop.

If what Caitlin said was true, I was supposed to be a sack of bones right now – atrophied muscles instantly made one scrawny as can be.

That wasn’t what happened at all – the body in the mirror didn’t even look like mine. It had little to no trace of fat; I didn’t exactly have bulging abs, but it was almost as if every trace of nonessential fat had disappeared, giving me curves around my waist and hips and a flat stomach.

I don’t think normal comas were supposed to do that.

Quickly shaking my head, I pull on the STAR Labs sweatpants and t-shirt that I had been provided with, leaning over the sink to splash my face with cold water. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something off about this entire situation – I was no doctor, but I didn’t think coma patients just suddenly woke up without any warning like Barry and I did. And I _knew_ , for a fact, that muscles that didn’t get used for nearly a year wouldn’t be able to support my weight – but here I was, standing on my own two feet.

And there was still something that felt a little off with the world – something that told me that the girl that went into that coma would not be the same girl that came out.

Turning off the faucet, I dry off my face and look up into the mirror over the sink…and then nearly fall backward, tightly gripping the edge of the sink to stay upright.

My eyes…were glowing. They were glowing _silver_ , actually, which made it all the creepier since my eyes were usually green. As I stare at my own reflection in shock, a tingling sensation creeps over my skin, feeling almost like an electrical current running just under my skin. For a moment, the air in the bathroom seems almost heavy, for lack of a better word, and chills race up and down my spine.

And then I blink, and the moment is over. My eyes revert to their usual, everyday, non-glowy hazel-green; the tingling sensation quickly fades from my skin, and the bathroom is still empty, save for me staring intently into the mirror.

“That did not just happen,” I whisper to my reflection.

“Whatever that was, it _did not_ just happen.”


	4. Stepping Into the Sunlight

After my eyes returned to normal and my little episode – whatever it was – passed, I quickly leave the bathroom, insisting that “I really don’t need the wheelchair, Caitlin.”

“You just woke up from a coma half an hour ago!” she protests, dutifully following me as I hobble down the hall to the room where I’d woken up. “You really shouldn’t be walking…”

“But I am,” I remind her. “I don’t know why, but I’m walking, and if I stay in that wheelchair for much longer my legs are going to stiffen up like icicles.”

That makes her visibly hesitate. “I…that wouldn’t be good…”

“Right. So, here’s what I suggest – you let me walk, and I make sure Barry doesn’t go running off to do anything stupid.”

Something odd flits over Caitlin’s face, but I blink and it’s gone; Caitlin just quietly lets me keep a slow pace down the hallway, hovering behind me with the wheelchair at the ready, just in case.

And that’s a good thing, too, because just as I step foot into the main room, I’m almost bowled over by a bone-crushing hug.

“Ellie – oh my god, El-”

“Iris,” I greet cheerfully, expecting to see her smiling during our little reunion – only, her shoulders were shaking, and I didn’t think it was out of laughter. “Iris? Hey, what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?!” she nearly shrieks, pulling back to look me in the eyes. “What’s _wrong_ is that you – you were brain dead, Ellie! You _died!_ ”

“I – what?” I give her a confused look, glancing down at myself as if confirm that, yep, I was still breathing. I look past Iris at Joe, who seemed hesitant to take his eyes off Barry for even a second. “Joe?”

“It's true,” he nods slowly, and I suddenly notice how much older he looked. “Your brain activity…the EEG machine was flatlining. Barry, you just kept flatlining – and _both_ of you had horrible seizures,” Joe recounts quietly. “It’s a miracle you’re both alive.”

“Actually, no,” Wells interrupts succinctly, and I whirl around to face him, a million questions on my tongue. “Take a seat, all of you, and I can explain everything.”

I nod, but before anyone can move, Joe’s phone begins to ring and the detective answers it with a tired sigh. He listens for a moment, nods, grunts, and then hangs up with another, heavier sigh.

“Singh wants me at work,” he explains. “But I can tell him I’m busy if you’d rather I stay…”

I shake my head. “No, Joe, go. Tell Singh I – we,” I correct at Barry’s protest, “said hi, and go catch the bad guys. We’ll be fine.”

“If you’re sure…”

“We’re sure,” Barry backs me up. “Promise. And we’ll call if something goes wrong.”

Joe hesitates for a moment, glancing between Barry and I before he nods and pulls us both into a tight hug. “You have no idea how hard these nine months were.”

“I’m sure,” I mutter into his shoulder. Joe presses a kiss into my hair and then lets us go, nodding at Wells, Caitlin, and Cisco as he leaves the room.

“Miss West,” Dr. Wells prompts as soon as has gone. “Don't you have somewhere to be?”

“I – no,” she squeaks. “I mean, I have work, but…”

“Go,” Barry urges gently. “We’ll be fine, I promise. Besides, it’s not like we’ll die if you take your eyes off us,” he jokes, but a shadow falls over Iris’ face – that was exactly what she was afraid of, I realize with a start.

“Seriously, Iris,” I interject. “Go to work. We’ll be fine – the doctors are just being paranoid.” I steadily ignore Caitlin’s noise of protest. “And we’ll call you when we’re done.”

Iris hesitates, but I give her a small smile and she concedes and grabs her bag, giving Barry and I each another hug – and Barry gets a cheek kiss, his blush was a sight to behold – before leaving.

Once the door closes after her, I swivel around to face Dr. Wells. “What was so important that everyone had to leave?”

Wells arches an eyebrow. “Did you want everyone else here for this discussion?”

“I…” I falter and fall silent, remembering the pain in Iris’ voice at even the _memory_ of Barry and I dying. To actually discuss it would probably be an all-new kind of hell for her. “No.”   

 Wells nods sharply and turns his chair, wheeling out of the room and down a hallway. “Follow me, please.”

I flick my eyes over to Barry – who looked just as confused as I felt, so that was good – and shrug before following Wells.

“So, Dr. Wells,” I begin once we’ve caught up with him, “to be perfectly blunt, how am I not dead?”

“Because you were never dead in the first place, Ms. Allen,” he explains. “Neither were you, Mr. Allen. Neither of you was ever medically dead.”

“But…I flatlined,” Barry says, confused. “Joe said I flatlined more than once. I mean, maybe the hospital has the equipment to revive me once, but more than once? I’m not that lucky.”

“And speaking of hospitals, why aren't we in one?” I ask, peering into rooms as we walk past them.

“One question at a time, please,” Wells requests, not looking at as we continue through the hallways. “For the first matter – as I said before, you. Never. Flatlined. Your heart, Barry, never stopped – instead, it was going too fast for the monitor to register.”

Barry, despite his considerable knowledge of the scientific field, can only gape and reply with, “Huh?”

I don’t say anything; instead, I reach two fingers up and press them against the side of Barry’s neck, feeling for his pulse point.

Wells was right – instead of the usual _ba-bump, ba-bump,_ what I felt was more of a _bumpbumpbumpbump._

“Holy shit,” I whisper, dropping my hand. “Wells, what…”

“You see, don’t you, Ms. Allen?” Wells murmurs, his face twisting into a triumphant smirk. “Why the hospital couldn’t keep you?”

“My brain waves…were they doing the same thing?” I ask, slowing to a stop in the middle of the hallway. “Joe said the EEG machine was flatlining.”

“Not for the same reasons, though,” Wells argues. “Your brain waves, Ellie, are not any quicker than mine – they’re simply stronger.”

This time it was my turn to mutter an unintelligent response somewhere along the lines of, “What?”

“All will be explained in due time,” Wells assures me.

“Dr. Wells-” I begin, irritated, but Wells cuts me short with a shake of his head as we emerge into a large room.

“This is a new world for all of us,” he explains. “The particle accelerator changed the world as we know it – for the better or the worse has yet to be seen. The change did not stop at the two of you.”

Wells wheels himself closer to the railing, and Barry and I follow him over. I lean against the railing and look down – below us was a crater of destruction, filled with blacked rubble and debris. I could spot pieces of twisted metal and ash. Whatever happened here, it had been powerful enough to bend an I-beam like a soft pretzel.

“How close was this to the explosion?” I ask quietly, leaning heavily on the railing.

“Just above it.”

“How many people got hurt?” Barry asks from Wells’ other side.

“Several,” Wells sighs. “Employees of mine, citizens of the city…it’s what landed me in this wheelchair,” he reveals, motioning at his legs.

“Oh…” Barry mutters quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“I was recovering myself when I heard about the two of you,” he explains. “A man who kept giving the hospital blackouts every time he went into cardiac arrest and a woman who was caught in a near-fatal cycle of extreme epileptic seizures. The hospital was sorely unequipped to handle one of you, let alone both – so I got Detective West to transfer you into my care.”

“I would’ve thought you had better things to do than take on two mysteriously-comatose average CSIs,” I joke weakly.

“STAR Labs isn't exactly popular among the community.” Wells’ face twists into a slight smirk before he sighs, slumping slightly in his chair. “We’ve been shut down since FEMA classified us as a class-four hazardous location. A majority of my employees quit. I accomplished my life’s dream, and then it was gone…in a flash. The two of you were my only hope.”

“I don’t understand,” Barry objects. “You sound like we’re some kind of miracle or something, but we aren't.”

“At the moment, nobody knows what you are or are not,” Wells declares, turning around and moving away from the railing and back the way we came. “The two of you were the only ones struck that night, and you have come out the other side of that accident not only good but _better_. You do not understand how many mysteries you can unlock.”

Silence yawns between our party of three for a long time before I shake my head and raise a hand to rub my eyes until spots bloom behind my eyelids. “Yeah, okay. Look, before we start ‘unlocking mysteries’ and shit, I need sleep. Can I go home? No, wait, never mind. I’m going home anyway. Where’s my stuff?”

I fully expected Dr. Wells to throw a fit, to demand I stay and undergo more tests, but he just nods with an understanding look and wheels off down a side hallway, returning just a few minutes later with a STAR Labs duffel bag.

“Here you go. Everything that was recovered from your lab when they found you.”

I internally wince at the reminder of the lab – and therefore the job that I may or may not still hold – but quickly push it down as I sling the bag over my shoulder. “Thank you, Dr. Wells, and if you could be so kind as to point me to the elevator, I’ll see you…soon.”

Five minutes later, I step out of STAR Labs for the first time in nine months. The sun is shining, there are birds chirping, a gentle breeze was playing with my hair – I could almost pretend, for a quick moment, like nothing had happened. Like no time had passed.

_Yeah, right,_ a sardonic little voice in my head whispers, _and next thing you know, pigs will be joining the Air Force._

I shake my head to clear it, steadfastly ignoring how the leaves were now amber and gold instead of green and the air was colder than I remembered.

One thing that hadn’t changed was Central City itself, and I quickly navigate the streets of downtown until I’m within sight of a familiar apartment building.

A quick word about my apartment before you see it: it’s an absolute craphole, and I’m not afraid to admit that.

Joe had described it as a “rat hovel with human accommodations” when I first moved in. That much was true, actually – it did have its fair share of pest problems, along with paper-thin walls and upstairs neighbors that always had really loud sex at 3am.

I didn’t have much – a tiny little kitchen, a living room with a decent TV and a sucky couch, a bedroom with an odd stain on the ceiling and a bathroom that always smelled a little like mold.

Joe had tried to convince me to move out countless times over the past few years, but this apartment had one thing no other place did: it was mine. This apartment had belonged to a lonely 21-year-old that had no clue what she was doing and everything to prove.

I’d gotten my life together since then, of course, but I kept the apartment anyway.

A quick last-minute phone call to Joe revealed that he’d kept the lease up while I was…asleep, doing the same for Barry’s place, which was about a block and a half away. According to Joe, my keys counted as ‘personal effects’, so I easily dig them out of my bag as I approach the door to my ground-floor unit.

I push the door open and then kick it closed, trudging a few steps inside and dropping my bag on the couch, following it soon after and wincing as the couch shrieks in protest.

“Home, sweet home,” I announce to the empty apartment, flopping back so that my head was resting on the arm of the couch. Oddly enough, even after being in a coma for what felt like forever, I was exhausted, and it doesn’t take very long for sleep to sink its claws into me.


	5. A New Normal

Getting back to normal is a slow process. It involves a lot of baby steps, formerly inconsequential things that were now instrumental in getting my proverbial footing back.

The day after Barry and I woke up, I went grocery shopping and refilled my fridge. I gave my apartment a deep cleaning, the likes of which it had never seen before and will probably never see again. I reorganized everything I could, from my closet to the kitchen cupboards. I did multiple loads of laundry.

I tried extremely hard to forget about how my eyes turned silver in the bathroom at STAR Labs. They had stayed green since, so I put the one incident down to a fluke.

It took exactly one week for me to finally convince Joe to let me go back to work for real – I’d been by the precinct several times to check up on the state of things, but always under the watchful eye of Joe, who didn’t let me out of his sight for a moment.

Walking through the front doors of the CCPD with a new employee ID clipped to my belt was the best feeling I’d had since waking up. It was the most normal feeling I’d had all week. And judging by Barry’s deep breath as he walks in beside me, he felt the exact same way.

“Allen!” Captain Singh calls as we approach the stairs. “Good to see you on time for once.”

“Well we couldn’t make a bad first impression, now could we?” Barry retorts cheekily.

“And it’s good to see you too, Cap’n,” I drawl. “It’s like we never left.”

“You’ve got a mountain of cases waiting for you,” he informs us. “Your replacements were…bad, to say the least.”

“So you _did_ miss us,” I deduce triumphantly.

Singh is very quick to correct, “I missed your work. Get back to it.”

Barry and I nod and start up the stairs, but we are quickly stopped by Singh speaking up again.

“Allen…Ellie.”

I stop and spin around, waving for Barry to go on ahead as I face Singh again. “Yessir?”

“Good to have you back.”

I can almost feel my jaw drop as shock crashes over me like a tidal wave. “Uh…yes…sir.”

Singh nods, I nod back, and just like that, the moment’s over. I scurry away and up the stairs, grinning to myself as I approach the lab. “You know, I think Singh is warming up to me.”

“One can only hope,” Barry sighs. “But we’ve got bigger problems. Look around.”

I do so, raising an eyebrow at the state of the lab. It was organized, neat, and clean. The chemicals were neatly shelved and the papers stacked in tidy piles, and yet…

“It’s wrong,” I declare. “The chemicals are organized wrong and my desk is too clean…” I trail off, suddenly noticing that the skylight was gone – the glass that once showed the sky now only showed more bricks. Directly below that, there was a blacked spot just big enough for two people to stand in.

“I really hope they get rid of that soon,” I whisper, and Barry murmurs his agreement from behind a pile of paperwork.

I turn sharply on my heel to avoid staring at the spot and take a seat at my desk, running a hand over the wood and frowning as I leave trails in the layer of dust coating it.

“I thought Singh said we had replacements?”

“We did, but I don’t think they worked in here,” Barry guesses. “Maybe Joe banished them to a closet or something.”

“Figures he would,” I snort, shaking my head. “This just means I’ll have to dust in here for the first time in forever. And reorganize everything, of course, but that’ll come with time.”

Barry nods, and I grab the first file off my stack; just as I turn on my computer, however, there’s a knock on the door.

“Come in!” I call, and the door swings open to admit Iris, who prances in per usual, except she’s followed by a tall, blonde, honestly very pretty man.

“Who’s your friend?” I ask, interest piqued.

“Oh, right, I forgot – Ellie, meet Detective Eddie Thawne, my…friend. Eddie, this is Ellie and Barry Allen, my two best friends since forever.”

“Hi.” I get up and move around my desk to shake the detective’s hand, instantly noting everything I could – his grip was firm, his hand rough via gun callouses. He was blonde, with blue eyes and a build like that of a model; in short, he was _way_ too handsome for Iris’ ‘friend’ title to be entirely correct.

“Hey, Iris,” I call over, interrupting her chat with Barry. “Can I speak to you for a moment?”

“Uh, sure,” she replies, sounding confused, but walks over anyways. “What is it?”

Instead of replying, I grab her arm and forcibly drag her out of the room, stopping once we were in a quiet corner just down the hall.

“ _That_ …is not your friend,” I accuse, jabbing a finger back towards the lab. “He looks like he just stepped out of a Hollister magazine. Tell me he’s not just your friend.”

“What? No. Ellie, I swear, he’s just my friend,” she defends. “You’re reading too deeply into this. Besides, I’ve been too distracted over the past few months to get a boyfriend anyway.”

“Riiiight,” I agree, shifting my weight and crossing my arms. “So if I, by chance, happened to walk back in there and give Detective Thawne a steamy kiss, right out of the blue, you’d be completely fine with it?”

The shock, and then anger, on Iris’ face gives her away in a second, but she still holds up her cover. “I – what? Yeah, sure, I’d be fine. I don’t know why you’d do that, though, given that it’s totally random and you’re at work and…”

I sigh and shut my eyes with a slight shake of my head. I can feel that tingly feeling from the bathroom returning, racing under my skin like a million volts of electricity. I almost don’t seem to be in control of my own body as I square my feet, place my hands on Iris’ shoulders, look her straight in the eyes, and say only five words:

“Iris… _tell. Me. The. Truth._ ”

Standing this close, looking directly at Iris, there’s no way I can miss what happens next: Iris’ face loses all emotion – it’s like she had suddenly fallen asleep or turned into a statue. There was no expression whatsoever. And then her eyes turn from brown to cloudy to silver – the same shade of silver my eyes had turned two days ago.

I don’t even hear Iris’ reply as my heart plummets into my stomach. I had no idea what had just happened, but I knew – somewhere, deep inside – that I’d caused it. I had just done something to Iris, and I had _no idea_ what.

I eventually mutter out some excuse to leave and stumble back down the hallway and into the lab. Luckily, Eddie had left and Barry was back at work, which let me return to work and make my best attempt at shoving down the panic threatening to rise up and choke me without anyone asking questions.  

Despite the seclusion, I can’t get the look on Iris’ face – or the lack thereof – out of my head. It didn’t help that the tingly feeling hadn’t faded from my limbs yet; I currently felt like I had a circuit board powered up under my skin. The feeling seemed to be concentrating in my head, bringing on the telltale signs of a headache.

I was just about to put my head down and maybe get some sleep when Barry bursts through the door with a cacophony of sound.

“…Aren't you supposed to be on a lunch break?” I ask tiredly as I pinch the bridge of my nose.

“Did you know Detective Horowitz had a baby?” Barry demands urgently. He sounded like he was hanging onto the edge of panic, and I raise my head to look at him properly.

“I didn’t know she was even pregnant.”

“She – are you okay?” Barry asks suddenly, breaking through his explanation to give me a quizzical look.

“Yeah, just a bit of a headache,” I sigh. “Why?”

“Your eyes, they looked…never mind.” He shakes his head. “Detective Horowitz had a _baby._ I – she wasn’t even pregnant!”

“Not when we went under, no,” I sigh, spinning around in my chair and using my reflection in the window to make sure that my eyes were green. “But if I remember high school biology correctly, nine months and one week is plenty time to have a baby.”

“Right, right, it’s just…” Barry rakes a hand through his hair, a familiar gesture of frustration. “God, we just – nine months, Ellie. It doesn’t feel like we even left!”

“’Course it doesn’t,” I shrug nonchalantly. “To us, it just feels like we took a really long nap.”

“How are you being so chill about this?!” Barry demands in a voice that’s just shy of a shout.

“Oh, trust me, I’m not,” I quickly assure him, shoving my chair back. “I’m freaked out, Bear, and I’m a hair’s breadth away from flipping-”

I’m cut off by the sound of the door slamming as Barry bolts from the room. I freeze for a moment, gaping at the door for a moment before my mind finally catches up to my body and I scramble after him. I manage to keep track of him down the stairs, out the front doors of the precinct, and into a side alley.

“Barry,” I shout. “Barry! Stop!”

He skids to a halt in the middle of the alley, and even from several feet away I can see his chest heaving. I can see his anxious tics – running his hand through his hair, pulling at his collar, pacing agitatedly back and forth across the alley.

“Barry…” I begin, but the air is stolen from my lungs as Barry turns around and holds up his hands…which were vibrating. I blink to make sure I wasn’t seeing things – and, no, they were still vibrating.

“Barry, what’s going on?” I ask quietly. “What is this?”

“I don’t know,” he whispers. “It – it feels like I’ve got this energy built up in my chest and I can’t get it out. My skin is all weird, and my hands keep shaking, and I feel like I’ve just had ten cups of coffee in the last hour.”

“Mhm,” I nod slowly, mentally comparing my brother’s condition to my own – the odd, tingly feeling was the same, although his seemed to be based in his chest while mine was still giving me a headache. I wasn’t as jittery as he described, though.

“If you’re feeling hyped up, then what do you need to do to get the energy out?”

“I think…” Barry pauses before blurting out, “I need to run.”

“You-” I take a step back. “You’re not much of a runner, Bear.”

“I know,” he huffs. “I know. But…”

I nod and shuffle back a few steps, waving a hand at the mouth of the alley. “Be my guest.”

Barry nods, takes a deep breath, and takes a step forward – only to disappear in a gust of wind.

“What…the _fuck_?” I ask the empty alley, glancing left and right – I was alone. Barry was just…gone. Whoosh.

Until he reappears with another _whoosh,_ a flash of yellow light, and an exclamation of “Whoa yeah!”

“What was that?” I demand hotly, circling Barry to check for any wounds.

“I was fast,” he whispers, and then louder: “I was _fast!_ ”

“Quiet,” I hiss, slapping a hand over his mouth. “Advertise our freaky abilities to the whole city, why don’t you?”

Barry rolls his eyes and huffs against my hand, and I remove it before he decides to lick it.

“What do you mean, you were fast?” I continue quietly. “Because I saw you disappear.”

“I must’ve been running too fast for you to see,” he realizes slowly. “Ellie, I was going so _fast_ , and I know I should be scared right now, but this is the most normal I’ve felt since waking up.”

I purse my lips and run a hand through my hair as I pace in a circle, ending up in front of Barry again as I side-eye him. “You sure?”

“That I’m alright, or that I feel normal?”

“…Yes.”

“I feel fine,” he promises. “I feel _better_ than fine, actually.”

I hiss out a breath and squeeze my eyes shut as a decision falls into place. Opening them again, I turn around and retreat towards the street. “Come on. Call Joe, would you? Tell him we’re taking the rest of the day.”

“Where are we going?”

“Back to S.T.A.R. Labs. We need to get some answers, now.”

.

“Ow. Ow. Ah – ow. Caitlin! Stop!”

“Well, I’m sorry for ensuring your continued good health!” the doctor – bio-engineer, actually, as she’d offhandedly mentioned – retorts as she removes yet another needle from my arm.

I wince as she prepares yet another syringe. Since arriving at S.T.A.R. Labs about an hour and a half earlier, I’d been subjected to at least two rounds of every medical test I could think of, some I couldn’t, and then some I was sure she’d made up to torture me.

“Is this really necessary?” I whine as she sticks me again. “I just wanna know if I’m radioactive or not.”

“You’re probably not,” she reassures me. “And if it’s any consolation, I’m going to do the same thing to Barry as soon as he gets off the treadmill. You did say he was running faster than usual, right?”

“Well given that he’s usually a slow-ass runner, yeah,” I huff with a grin. “I mean, I just saw him disappear and then reappear in a flash, but he said he was just running too fast for me to track.”

Caitlin hums in confirmation as she checks a monitor. “And have you been experiencing anything like that?”

I shake my head, but pause as I wonder if I should tell her about the altercation with Iris earlier. I didn’t want to tell her – I didn’t want to tell anyone. I wanted to keep that a secret until the day I died. On the other hand, though, Caitlin Snow and her colleagues were possibly the only ones that could help me figure out what was going on. I was getting the strong impression that if I told anyone else, I’d be shipped off to the psychiatric ward of Iron Heights, and one family member in there was more than enough.

That, and I still had a killer headache. Maybe Caitlin would have something for it.

I release a deep sigh and slowly start talking about what had happened since I woke up – how my eyes had been changing color, how I’d talked to Iris, the way her face had looked afterwards; even down to the electric feeling Barry and I had both been feeling all morning.

“And you’re sure her face went blank?” she questions, a thoughtful look on her face.

“I couldn’t miss it,” I assure her, my throat dry.

“How were you talking to her? Just normally, like you are right now, or…”

“Um…” I tip my head back as I try to remember. “I was frustrated. She was hiding something from me, something stupid, and I got frustrated and demanded she tell me the truth…and she did.”

“So whatever this is, it’s triggered by adrenaline…” she muses, inspecting an instrument tray. I watch as she picks up a scalpel and flips it over in her hands as she moves back towards me.

Without warning, she lunges at my side, scalpel glinting dangerously. I yelp and dive out of the way, screaming “Caitlin, _stop!”_

Nothing happens.

I turn my head to see Caitlin’s face blank, her eyes shining silver. And then, in the blink of an eye, her eyes are blue again and all she says is, “Hm.”

“That’s all you have to say?!” I ask incredulously. “I just hypnotized you and all you have to say is ‘hm’?!”

“It worked, then.”

“You didn’t know it would work?” I ask. “You would have stabbed me!”

Caitlin only gives me a vague shrug as she returns the scalpel to its tray and jots something down on a piece of paper.

“The good thing,” she surmises, “is that it worked. You know how to trigger the…whatever it is, now.”

“What, by waiting for someone to stab me?” I ask dryly. “Sure, sounds like a plan.”

“I _meant_ with the adrenaline factor,” she corrects firmly. “Now you know how to turn the ability on and off, since you’re not using your…ability…right now, right?”

I nod, looking away from Caitlin as footsteps sound from the doorway and Cisco and Barry appear, the latter’s hair looking windswept.

“How was the treadmill?” I ask, hopping off the examination table and straightening my t-shirt.

“Our man Barry here just broke the treadmill,” Cisco reports, practically bouncing from excitement. “He’s like a real _Speed Racer_.”

“Except for the part where I’m not a car,” Barry interjects dryly as he takes my place on the table and Caitlin readies her tests all over again.

“Well, wish me luck. And have fun over here,” I add on, quirking a grin. “She’s got a _load_ of fun planned for you,” I call over my shoulder. I just barely make it out of the room before snickering madly.

“What is this about?” Cisco asks as he follows me into a side room where a chair that looks frighteningly like an electric one awaits, along with Dr. Wells.

“Um, just a sibling thing,” I mutter distractedly, giving the chair a wary look. “What’s with all…this? I’m not going to get electrocuted, right?”

“What? Oh, no,” Cisco assures me quickly. “We were originally going to put you on the treadmill, to see if you had the same thing your brother did, but since the treadmill can’t handle Barry Allen, we’ve got to settle for this.” He waves a hand at the chair. “With this bad boy, we’ll be able to read your brain waves, as well as energy possibly outputted from your hands and feet. You just need put this on.” He holds out a bundle of black fabric.

I take it and unroll a black tank top made of a material that felt like synthetic, but different. “What is this?”

“A conductive fabric I designed that’ll be able to read electrodes without you, uh, stripping,” he explains, stuttering awkwardly. “I figured that’d be uncomfortable for everyone involved.”

“Yeah,” I laugh, turning to head towards the bathroom. “Thanks, Cisco.”

It only takes me about a minute to switch from my street clothes to the ones Cisco had designed – along with the shirt, there were also knee-length shorts that reminded me of the ones cyclers wore. Everything was skintight, which was annoying, but I understood the necessity of it.

I return to the room with the Electric-Chair-That-Wasn’t and take a seat. Cisco quickly attaches electrodes to my temples, forehead, and neck, and then various other places on my hands, feet, and torso.

“Make sure to sit still, Ms. Allen,” Dr. Wells instructs. “We’re starting the readings in three…two…one…”

The room is filled with a mechanical humming as the machines start up, followed by a chorus of beeping as they start taking readings.

“Okay, they’re holding steady,” Cisco calls out. “Your brainwaves are sky-high, Ellie. I’m no neurologist, but I don’t think this is normal.”

I watch Dr. Wells wheel himself over to where the engineer was standing, and I watch with growing agitation as his eyes widen minutely. “Dr. Wells?”

“Everything is alright, Ellie,” he assures me. “You’re not in any danger. However, your brainwaves are much more active than that of a normal human being.”

“Um…how so?” I ask, being careful not to fidget.

“How much do you know about neurology, Ms. Allen?”

“Not much. I went to school for physics and engineering.”

“There are five types of brain waves,” Wells informs me. “From fastest to slowest, there are Gamma, Beta, Alpha, Theta, and Delta. The highest of these – Gamma, responsible for higher processing and cognitive functions – don’t usually exceed 100 Hertz.”

“And…mine are reading...what?”

“It’s peaking at 500,” Cisco offers.

I can only gape at the two of them as that information sinks in – my brain was five times more powerful than it had been before the accident. And somehow, that had a direct influence over what came out of my mouth.

“This is why I can make people…do things, right?” I ask quietly.

“Is that what you think this is?” Wells asks. “Some sort of…mental manipulation?”

I hesitated, biting my lip as I glance between Cisco and Wells. “I don’t know. I was hoping you knew, Dr. Wells.”

“I am a man of science, Ellie, not one of magic,” Wells admonishes as he wheels himself from behind the console and moves to the center of the room. “I want you to remember every time you’ve used your…abilities. Remember any common factors between the incidents.”

“I’ve already told Caitlin this,” I offer. “She found out that adrenaline usually triggers – uh, whatever this is.”

“Ah,” Wells murmurs thoughtfully. “I’ll have to see Dr. Snow about her findings, then. For now, Cisco, disconnect Ms. Allen, please – I think we’ve put her through enough tests today.”

I quirk a grin as Cisco quickly unhooks the electrodes and hands me my clothes. “Thanks.”

“Ellie.” Dr. Wells stops me just as I was about to walk out the door. “I think it is safe to say that not only are you and Barry two-of-a-kind. You are going to change the world.”

“Thank you,” I mumble as I shuffle out the door.

_That’s what I’m afraid of._


	6. The First Hurdle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Hope you like this chapter - if you like the story, please tell me what you think! I live for feedback!

****Do you ever find yourself in a situation where one moment, you’re just living your everyday life, and then something happens and suddenly you realize that everything is clear – you’ve got a purpose in life that you didn’t see before.

I’ve had several of these revelations, personally. One the night my mother died. One the time I realized that the justice system wouldn’t help my father, so I had to do it myself.

And that was just before I turned fifteen. Many more were to follow, but the most important one happened one week and one day after I woke up from the coma. I can even remember the exact circumstances: I’d woken up early for once and decided I could treat myself to a Frappuccino and a brownie from Jitters. The usual location had been closed, so I detoured to one in a slightly shadier part of the city.

After a quick coffee break, I started to make my way to work. I cut through some of the back streets of the city for a while, and then I rounded a corner and stumbled upon an unusual scene: two men in ski masks cornering their victim; a girl of maybe sixteen, at the very most.

I drop my coffee and shrink back behind the corner, pressing my back against the brick as I strain to hear what was being said.

“Just give us the purse and no one has to get hurt,” one of the robbers says in a low tone. “Nice and quiet, now.”

“You can’t do this!” a second voice protests, this one young, shrill, and female – the victim. “Please, just let me go! I’m only fifteen, this is all I have-”

“Hand over the bag, bitch!” a third voice – the second robber – says harshly. “I’m not afraid to shoot you, kid or not!”

My pulse jumps, and I peer out from behind my hiding spot to see that the men have close in on the girl and are brandishing their guns in the most threatening way possible. Pulling back, I take a deep breath as a conversation I’d held with Dr. Wells during my last visit to STAR Labs comes floating back to me.

_“I can make people…do things…”_

_“Is that what you think this is? Some sort of mental manipulation?”_

If I could get Iris to tell the truth, and Caitlin to _not_ stab me, then I could probably get these guys to drop their guns without getting shot.

_That’s a pretty big ‘if’_ , a traitorous little voice in the back of my mind whispers.

_Shut up,_ I tell it sternly as I lean back and close my eyes, focusing on the way the adrenaline was making my heart pound, the way my blood was roaring in my ears. I could almost feel the electricity running through my body, washing over my brain in a wave of power. I reach out and grab on to that wave, letting it crash over me and envelope me like a tidal wave – although, right now, I wasn’t drowning.

When I opened my eyes, I knew, with absolute certainty, that they were shining silver.

 I take another deep breath and step around the corner, crossing the distance between me and the mugging in a few steps.

“Hey!” I call, my voice carrying an eerie echo. “Why don’t you two asshats pick on someone your own size?”

“This doesn’t concern you, lady,” one of the robbers – the first voice – snaps, looking over his shoulder at me. “Get lost.”

“I don’t think I will,” I counter. “I’m not going to let you do this.”

“Really?” The second robber laughs. “What are you, some kind of _superhero_?”

“Not…quite,” I reply with only a moment of hesitation as I step forward. “I need you to put the gun down.”

The robber’s gaze flashes silver and his grip falters, but he doesn’t put the gun down – I take a deep breath, clench my fists, and repeat myself.

“ **Put. The gun. Down. _Now,_** ” I order, the echo behind my voice intensifying until it bounced off the building around me.

The robber’s gaze flashes silver as his grips goes slack. The gun falls to the pavement and I quickly kick it away, glancing at the second mugger – thankfully, he seemed too stunned to move – before returning to my main target.

“ **Sit down** ,” I command, pleased to see the mugger do just that. Turning my attention to the second mugger, I raise an eyebrow. “What’re you looking at? **Drop your gun and sit down next to your friend.** ”

He complies, and although I could feel my adrenaline fading, I face both the muggers and use the last dredges of my energy to command, **“Stay still until the police get here.”**

Their eyes flash silver. Satisfied, I nod to myself and move around them to approach the victim. “Are you okay?”

“I…y-yeah,” she squeaks, voice and hands both trembling. “Thank…thank you. How did you just do that?”

“Uh…long story,” I stammer. “What’s your name?”

“I – I’m Alyssa.”

“Okay, Alyssa, I’m Ellie,” I introduce myself with a sense of calm that I certainly wasn’t feeling. “Alyssa, are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” she assures me. “How did you – what did you do to them?” she asks, backing away from the muggers and giving me a wary look. “Did you kill them?”

“No,” I pant, feeling the adrenaline fade completely. “No, just – they shouldn’t bother you. Please call 911, tell them what happened and…don’t mention me.”

“I – yes. Yes, okay, I – I’ll do that.” Alyssa fumbles with her phone as she dials the three digits, and I amble away while keeping one ear on her conversation with the dispatcher.

I lean back against the wall behind Alyssa partly out of habit and partly out of necessity; with the adrenaline gone, I had one hell of a crash coming on, which came with an all-inclusive headache, tremors, and a very sudden appetite.

I wait around until I hear sirens in the distance and then push off the wall, circling the would-be muggers to make sure they still hadn’t moved before approaching Alyssa again. “Remember, I was never here.”

“Sure, but why-”

I slip around the corner before she can finish the question. I walk past my spilled coffee with only a slight pause and a moment of silence in remembrance before I continue walking, pulling out my phone and hitting speed dial #1.

_“Hello?”_

“Barry, hey.”

_“Ellie? Where the hell are you, work started half an hour ago and Joe says you never showed!”_

I switch my phone between hands and check the time – sure enough, it was about 9:30. Apparently time flew when I was being a Good Samaritan.   

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be coming in today. I’ve got a few days saved up. I’m at the corner of Dalton and Pine – can you meet me at the park?”

_“Ellie, what’s going on? Joe’s gonna have my ass, let alone Singh-”_

“I’ll deal with Joe,” I cut in. “Please, Barry, it’s important.”

There’s a long, pregnant pause on the other end of the line, and just as I’m about to hang up, Barry sighs and says, _“Okay. Fine. I’ll be there in five.”_

“Yay. Thank you, Bear.”

_“Don’t thank me yet – you still have to deal with Joe.”_

“Ugh,” I groan, rolling my eyes. “You’re insufferable, you know that?”

_“Yeah. Bye,”_ he chirps before the line goes dead and I’m left staring at a black screen.

I half-heartedly grumble some not-so-complimentary words before picking up the phone and hitting speed dial #2. “Hey, Joe.”

_“Ellie! Why aren't you at work? You were supposed to be here-”_

“Half an hour ago,” I finish. “Yeah, I know. I’m not coming in today.”

_“What? Why?”_ my foster-father asks. _“Are you okay? Are you sick? Were there complications with the coma?”_

“No, no, Joe, I’m fine,” I quickly assure him before he can spiral further into panic. “It’s been a week, if there were any complications I think they would’ve found them by now. Nah, I’ve just got overprotective doctors,” I lie. “They’re just keeping me at STAR Labs for the day. It’s not a big deal, and I’ll call you if anything comes up. Promise.”

_“This better not be like the time you ‘promised’ me you wouldn’t take my car out for a joyride when you were fifteen. I’m still paying the bills for that one.”_

“No,” I laugh. “I’ll call you, I promise. For real this time.”

_“If you say so,”_ Joe relents, still not sounding convinced. _“Look, I’ve got to get back to work. Keep me in the loop, alright?”_

“Always,” I promise. “I’ll call you later, Joe.” I hit the ‘end call’ button and slip my phone into my pocket. After a pit stop at a nearby Big Belly Burger, I arrive at the park and find a seat on a bench, unwrapping my food and settling in to wait for my brother.

“Isn't it a little early for lunch?” Barry asks as he sits down next to me.

“Shut up, I’m starving,” I defend around a mouthful of fries. “I didn’t get breakfast this morning. I was a little busy stopping a mugging.”

“What?” Barry yelps. “Really? Are you hurt? What happened?”

“I’m fine,” I assure him. “I don’t have a scratch on me. All I had to do was tell the thugs to drop their guns…and they did. I literally told them to sit still and wait for the cops _and they did,_ Barry.”

“You used your powers again?” he asks excitedly.

“Powers?” I question skeptically. “Is that what we’re calling them now?”

“Well, yeah…I mean, that’s what Cisco called them the other day and it’s less creepy than ‘abilities.’”

“You make it sound like we’re superheroes,” I point out, amused.

Barry begins to backpedal. “I’m not saying we are-”

“But maybe we should be,” I argue, leaning forward to balance my elbows on my knees. “Barry, you told me that when you were running, it was the most normal you’d felt since waking up. And just now, I was able to _help_ someone – a teenager. A kid. I was able to save her. What if…what if we’re supposed to use our abilities – our _powers –_ to help people? What if that’s how we feel normal?”

“Are…are you saying we should become, like, Spiderman or something?”

“No, no, and I’m also _not_ saying to jump head-first into all this and start rescuing little old ladies from burning buildings. Don’t do that,” I instruct sternly.

“I wasn’t gonna do that,” Barry defends, putting on his best innocent face.

“You were.” I shake my head. “Look, we don’t even know how our powers work yet, and I’m not going to make a habit of trusting my life to something I don’t understand.”

“Then let’s understand them better,” Barry suggests as if it was the simplest thing in the world. “We could head into STAR Labs, see if they can find anything else.”

“What more is there to find?” I ask, rolling my eyes. “You run fast. I’m some sort of walking, talking puppeteer or something – which is a scary concept, when you think about it – and together, we…I don’t know, stop muggers? Rescue kittens from trees?”

“I don’t think I’m any good with heights, super speed or not,” Barry jokes as we make our way down the sidewalk. “That’s more your job, I think.”

“Yeah, I’ll leave the burning buildings and little old ladies to you,” I tease in return. “Speaking of, do you think…”

I trail off as we pass an electronics store, all the televisions in the display window displaying the same headline and the same footage of a news reporter standing in front of Central City National Bank.

_“…after the bank robbery earlier this morning,”_ the reporter was saying. _“Witnesses report seeing a man that could control the weather create a miniature hurricane inside the bank – while police have yet to comment on the matter, conspiracy theorists are already beginning to claim that this is the beginning of a new age of criminal…”_

I can feel the blood drain from my face as I whirl around to face Barry, and as his eyes meet mine, an unspoken agreement passes between us.

_We need to be at STAR Labs. Now._

* * *

“Has anyone seen the news this morning?” I demand as I burst into the cortex about five minutes later, thanks to my brothers newly-minted ‘powers’.

“Uh, no,” Cisco replies as he walks into the room. “Why, what’s going on?”

“I think we just found someone else with powers,” Barry announces. “Turn on the closest new channel – it’s probably everywhere by now.”

Cisco looks confused but complies anyway, turning on one of the monitors closest to the computer bank, which – sure enough – was showing the same story as the one Barry and I had seen.

“Five bucks says that guy was involved in the particle accelerator explosion,” Cisco jibes a few minutes later. He sounded like he was in the early stages of shock.

“No bet,” I huff from where I’d taken a seat behind the computers.

“What I’m more worried about is who that guy is,” Barry says. “He looks just like Clyde Mardon, but as far as Joe knows, the Mardon brothers both died the night of the accident.”

“Are you sure it’s Mardon?” I question. “I mean, he was wearing a baseball cap, and CCPD facial recognition software can’t usually make out faces if they’re covered.”

“Luckily for you, we’re not at the CCPD,” Cisco announces triumphantly. “Running facial recognition now…and…bam!”

I lean over his shoulder and sigh at the results. “93% match for Clyde Mardon.” I flop into a chair and sigh. “First we get literal _superpowers,_ and now people are coming back from the dead. I swear to god, if I start seeing unicorns I’m going to blame this on LSD.”

“Did I miss something?” Caitlin’s voice asks as she walks in the room, followed closely by the sound of Dr. Wells’ wheelchair.

“Oh, nothing much, just zombie supervillains,” Cisco informs her casually.

“We think Clyde Mardon – who is not dead, as we previously thought – was affected by the particle accelerator explosion,” Barry clarifies. “Dr. Wells, I thought you said we were two of a kind.”

I do a 180 and give the wheelchair-bound scientist an intense look. “If we weren’t the only ones, then how many others were affected? I mean, are we talking ten or one hundred?”

Wells doesn’t meet my eyes. “It’s difficult to say, really…we have no way of knowing how many meta-humans were created on the night of the accident.”

“You said the city was safe,” Barry accuses, the heat in his voice steadily rising. “You said there was no lasting danger! What if there’s a powered person-”

“Meta-human,” Cisco supplies.

“-a meta-human that can shoot lasers out of their eyes or – or one that could burn the city down with one thought? What then?”

 “We need to know how much danger the city is in, Dr. Wells.” I cross my arms and square my shoulders.  “And to do that, we need you to stop trying to cover up how much damage the particle accelerator caused.”

Wells looks up to meet my eyes, and after an intense staring contest – the glint in his eyes was unnerving, I had to admit – he wheels himself over to the console and pulls up a map on one of the monitors.

“This is a simulation I made just after the explosion,” he explains, pressing a few computer keys. “It’s designed to show how far the dark matter wave resulting from the particle accelerator explosion spread.”

On the monitor, I watch the explosion erupt in a dome of glowing light, enveloping the city at a rapid pace and leaving a sea of glowing dots in its wake, each one a possible metahuman.

Behind me, Barry makes a strangled sound. “That’s the entire city. The entire city was affected?!”

“It’s possible,” Caitlin confirms in a feeble voice.

I knew Barry was expecting me to come to his defense, but I keep my mouth shut as I run some mental math. At the last census, the population of Central City was reported at about 850,000 people – and that was four years ago. Even if only half those people were now meta-humans (which was probably an underestimate), we’d still have four hundred and twenty-five _thousand_ people with sudden powers that could wreak havoc on the city.

“We have to stop them,” I whisper. All of the conversation in the room suddenly halts, and I look up to see four pairs of eyes staring at me. “What?”

“You’re on board with that plan now?” Barry asks, equal measures surprised and skeptical. “You didn’t seem on board with that plan earlier.”

“Before I didn’t know that we have hundreds of thousands of potential hazards running loose in the city,” I snap.

“Okay, I’ve totally missed something here,” Cisco announces. “What plan are we talking about?”

“The one where Barry and I become…superheroes, for lack of a better word.”

Cisco’s face instantly lights up, and Caitlin looks excited, if a little more apprehensive than her colleague; Dr. Wells, on the other hand, looked extremely annoyed. I could tell, straight off the bat, that he didn’t think this was a good idea at all.

“Hold on a moment,” he demands. “We have no idea what the extent of your powers are – either of you – and you want to go out and play hero against forces you can’t hope to contain?”

“If I can help them, then yes,” I insist.

“But you can’t! Neither of you cannot help these people,” Wells nearly shouts. “You think you’re something special. You think you can do anything you want – you think you can push the bounds of safety but you can’t. You can’t do this, Eleanor!”

I shoot to my feet, ready to rise to my own defense, but Dr. Wells wheels himself forward to that we were toe-to-toe – or toe-to-wheel, I guess.

“You think you’re something special,” he hisses in a low tone. “You think you can be some great hero now that you’ve got these abilities, but you can’t. You are nothing special, do you hear me? What happened with the particle accelerator does not make you anything more than what you are – and the two of you are only a young man and a young woman that were struck by lightning.”

The room is left in stunned silence after Dr. Wells’ outburst, and the man himself turns around and moves towards the computer console, but I take a step forward. “No.”

“…Excuse me?”

“No,” I repeat through clenched teeth. “I refuse to believe that I can’t do anything about this situation, Dr. Wells. Because I have kick-ass, honest-to-god _superpowers_ and you wanna tell me I can’t help anything or anyone?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

“You don’t know what you would be facing if you did this,” Wells insists.

“Maybe I don’t,” I fire back. “But you know _nothing_ about me – don’t pretend that you do. I have seen the desperate side of humanity, Dr. Wells, in a way that you never have and probably never will. I have seen what fear and desperation and anger can do to good people – people I love. People I care about. If you think I am going to sit by and watch the people of this city fall to that same trend, you’ve got another thing coming.”

By the end of my little speech, my voice had risen to a shout, and once I pause to rein myself in, I notice that the room had gone completely silent. A quick glance around shows Barry, Caitlin, and Cisco all staring at me in shock.

Barry is the first to find his voice. “Ellie-”

Without saying a word, I snatch my jacket off a chair and aggressively tug it on as I storm out of the room.

“Ellie! El!” Barry calls behind me, his footsteps chasing me down the hallway. “Hey, wait!” he pleads as he catches up to me and grabs my arm.

“What?” I snap. “If you bought a word that man just said, Barry, I will punch you.”

“No, no, I believe you,” he promises. “I’m on board with the whole ‘helping people’ thing, but we need help.”

I pause, considering this for a moment before nodding. “Okay…but how exactly do we do that? I mean, it’s not like there’s a book called ‘Heroics for Dummies’ out there.”

“Yeah, but I know a guy who could help us out.” Barry grins. “How do you feel about a trip to Starling City?”


	7. We're Not in Kansas Anymore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a note, I've bolded the text to differentiate between when Ellie is speaking and when she's using her powers. Bold is with powers.

I yelp as I hit the pavement hard, roll over, and dry heave, committing every fiber of my being to _not_ throwing up.

“Sorry!” Barry yelps from somewhere above me. “Sorry, I completely forgot to factor in what the G-Force would do to you at that speed – oh my god, are you okay?”

“Do I look okay?” I groan, pushing myself into a sitting position, which was about as much as I could manage between the black spots swarming in my vision and the way the world was spinning like a top right now. “I could have died. Just – splat. No more Ellie. A tragic start to our superhero career. Speaking of, did you call him?”

“Yeah, he should be here any minute. Take your time, stand up whenever you’re ready,” he advises gently.

It takes about another two minutes for my vision to clear and the world to stand still, and by the time I find my feet again, a shadowed figure is just swinging down onto the roof.

I glance over and grin. “Oliver. Hey.”

“Ellie, Barry. Good to see you up and about,” the green-hooded vigilante greets as he turns around. “Should you even be walking around, let alone making the 600-mile journey to Starling just to say hello to a friend?”

“Uh, yeah, so…” I scuff a toe on the cement below us. “That’s the thing. We need your advice on something.”

Oliver gives us a questioning look, and Barry sighs. Together, we start the story from the beginning – everything from the particle accelerator to the accident to the coma, and then everything that had happened since then.

“So, let me get this straight,” Oliver says after we finish. He turns to Barry. “You can run at the speed of sound.”

“Yeah. I mean, not yet, but I might be able to go faster, we don’t know yet. I mean, it’s only been a week.”

“And you…” he turns to me. “You can…?”

“Hypnotize people,” I supply. “I think. It’s kinda complicated, I don’t know the full extent of what I can do yet.”

“Right,” Oliver nods, still looking slightly confused. “And the two of you want to become…superheroes.”

Barry and I nod simultaneously.

“Do you not think we could do it?” I ask anxiously.

“I have no doubt that the two of you, individually or as a team, could do what I do,” Oliver is quick to assure me. “My main question is why you would _want_ to.”

“Because…I’ve got superpowers? What _else_ would you like me to do, go work at Big Belly Burger?” I ask.

The corner of Oliver’s lips twitch upwards, and I count that as a win.

“But…what if Wells is right?” Barry asks. “What if we’re nothing but two kids that got struck by lightning? What if I can’t be you?”

“Don’t be me. Be better,” Oliver advises. “I don’t think that lightning struck you, I think it chose you. Both of you have an opportunity to inspire people in a way that I can’t; you can save people and help your city without them fearing you, without having to work in the shadows like I do.”

_“I don’t think that lightning struck you, I think it chose you.”_ That particular sentence forms a loop in my brain as I nod and release a deep breath. “Thank you, Oliver.”

The vigilante nods, and Barry clears his throat.

“We should head back,” he says. “We’ve got work to do, and STAR Labs is probably expecting us-”

As if on cue, Barry’s phone rings, Cisco’s name displayed on the screen. I stand by patiently as he picks up, talks for a moment, listens for a moment more, and then hangs up again.

“I’ve gotta go, they’ve got something for us at STAR Labs,” Barry blurts out in a rush, stuffing his phone back into his pocket.

“Okay, just-” Before I can finish, Barry disappears with a flash of lightning and a gust of wind. “Dammit, Barry! _Barry!”_ I shout, marching over to the edge of the roof and leaning over slightly. “He was my ride!” I exclaim angrily. I look over my shoulder to see Oliver repressing a smile. “It’s not _funny._ ”

“Of course not,” he agrees, his expression solemn and his eyes – even though they were covered by the mask – belying that entirely.

I half-heartedly grumble at him as I return to the center of the roof. “It’s probably going to take him a few minutes to realize he’s forgotten something, so if you need to go do your thing, don’t let me stop you.”

Oliver shakes his head. “I’ve got a few minutes.” He takes a seat on a large air conditioning unit. “Want another piece of advice?”

“Hm?”

“Get your own ride.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” I laugh. “Although, that’s probably best in the long-term – I can’t handle being carried much longer,” I admit. “Not because of my pride or anything, just because my body doesn’t like going 600 miles an hour and then stopping suddenly. But it also is a pride thing, don’t get me wrong – if I’m gonna be a superhero, my brother carrying me around like some damsel doesn’t exactly send the best message, you know?”

“Ellie. I get it,” Oliver cuts me off sternly.

“Oh. Right. Sorry,” I apologize sheepishly, feeling my cheeks burn. “So, what do you suggest? Ride-wise, I mean.”

“I’ve found that motorcycles generally work,” he says conversationally, looking out over the city.

I step up to his side, taking in the view; Starling City and I shared what one might call a troubled past, but even I couldn’t deny that the skyline at night was a sight to behold – the bustling streets, the skyscrapers twinkling with artificial stars…the streak of yellow lightning zooming towards us.

“Barry,” I hum to myself just before the man himself appears on the rooftop, panting slightly. “You forget something?”

“I am _so_ sorry!” he apologizes profusely. “I was already at home when I realized you weren’t there, and I didn’t mean to forget you, I _swear_ , and we really have to find a better system to this-”

“We do,” I agree, “but I can’t do that until we get home. Let’s go,” I prompt, allowing Barry to wrap an arm around my wait. “See you around, Oliver. Stay safe out there.”

“You too,” Oliver replies with a nod. “And one more thing: take your own advice. Wear masks.” With that, he fires a grappling arrow and swings off into the night.

“That is so cool,” I murmur quietly, watching his silhouette until I couldn’t see it anymore. Turning back to Barry, I loop my arms around his neck and the world dissolves into a blur.

Barry skids to a stop in front of STAR Labs, and once I was done transferring the contents of my stomach into the bushes out front, we head inside.

“Cisco, we need to find a better way for me to get around,” I announce as I enter the cortex. “Remind me to start looking at motorcycle designs when we get a break.”

“Noted, but we’ve got bigger fish to fry right now.” Cisco moves to one of the tables, which was stacked high with boxes – file boxes, I realize, marked with the CCPD logo. “This is all that we’ve managed to gather from the last nine months. The crime rate has skyrocketed, and a good 80% of it mentions ‘inexplicable circumstances,’” he explains, complete with air quotes. “Our meta-humans have been busy.”

I frown at the guilty look that takes over the other engineer’s face. “Hey, don’t do that,” I chide, crossing the room to poke him in the shoulder. “The particle accelerator was not your fault. You didn’t know what was going to happen. Neither of you did,” I add, glancing at Caitlin

“Yeah, but now we’ve got a circus of freaks running around the city, so excuse me if I’m not feeling too good about myself,” Cisco gripes, then whips his head around to look at me. “I didn’t mean _you_ were a freak-”

“Nah, it’s fine.” I wave a hand dismissively, leaning over to grab a file from the nearest box. “Some of these freaks have pretty cool powers, like this guy – who is reported as being able to ‘summon nearby animals and compel them to attack the mall security guard.’”

“We got a regular Snow White over here,” Cisco jokes, a smile retaking his face.

Caitlin, ever the realist, quickly pipes in with, “As cool as that may be, it could be dangerous. Imagine a full-grown deer attacking you without any protection.”

“Oh, and speaking of protection,” Cisco adds, “I’ve got something you’re going to need if we’re actually going to do this. Because, after all, what are two superheroes without their super suits?” he asks rhetorically, crossing the room to a small room off to the side of the cortex and beckoning for us to follow.

The side room’s main feature was a large object covered by a tarp, and once Cisco’s got the attention of the room, he yanks the tarp off to reveal a dummy clad in a skintight, dark red, leather suit with a cowl and gas mask.

“I’ve been working on this little treasure to replace the usual turnouts that firefighters wear,” the engineer explains proudly. “I figured that maybe if STAR Labs designed something good for the community, they wouldn’t hate us so much.”

“Has it worked?” I ask.

“Not really,” he sighs. “Anyway! The suit’s made out of a reinforced tri-polymer, specifically designed to survive in temperatures up to seven thousand degrees, which means that it can stand up to the friction that’s generated when you’re running. And it’s got built-in sensors and a GPS so we can keep an eye on you from here.”

“And it’s aerodynamic,” I notice, giving the suit a once-over. “Which means you won't have any drag while running.”

Barry nods. “Thanks, Cisco.”

“And Ellie,” Cisco calls, and I look over, “I’ve got a suit for you, too – equal opportunity for the lady firefighters and all – but it’s not ideal. Because your powers are different, I need to make some modifications to the original schematics, but this should hold up in the meantime.”

“Got it,” I nod before turning back to the cortex. “Right now, though, do we have anything on Mardon? The sooner we find him, the better.”

“I’ve got an idea that might help with that,” Caitlin offers. “I’ve looked at the footage of all of Mardon’s heists since the explosion, and I have a theory: if Mardon uses his powers to the extent of what we saw at the bank earlier, wouldn’t they cause a massive, abnormal drop in atmospheric pressure specific to Mardon’s location?”

“It would,” I realize suddenly. “And if we could track the atmospheric levels over the city, then we could pinpoint the anomalies and find Mardon.”

“I’ll re-task the STAR Labs satellite,” Cisco volunteers, darting back to his workstation. His fingers fly over the keyboard as Barry hovers over his shoulder anxiously.

“Yahtzee!” Cisco shouts after a moment of tense silence. “I’m picking up a low spot – it’s at a farm just west of the city.”

Barry looks up, and our eyes lock from across the room – this was it.

“Okay then,” I whisper breathily. “Let’s go kick some ass.” Barry speeds off, and I run into the side room. “Cisco, my suit?!”

“Left cabinet, second drawer down!”

I yank open the drawer indicated and grab the bundle of red fabric, shouting my thanks as I race into the nearest bathroom – it would have to do, seeing as there were no phone booths nearby.

It only takes me a moment to change into the suit and zip up. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and pull a face; the suit was far from ideal, but it would do for now. Tearing my gaze away from the mirror, I race out of the bathroom and through the hallways, skidding to a stop in the elevator lobby.

Barry was waiting, and he never looked more like my double than in that moment. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” I shrug as I grab on to my brother and the world blurs in a way that was quickly becoming familiar.

Barry skids to a stop and puts me down gently, and I impatiently wait for the nausea to fade and the world to stop tilting on its axis.

_Now is not the time to throw up, Ellie,_ I admonish myself. _Keep it together._

“Isn't this where Mardon was hiding out last time?” Barry wonders aloud as I collect myself.

“No idea, but I think we’ve got bigger problems,” I declare, pointing about two hundred yards ahead of us, where a tornado was raging and two figures were crouched behind a police car. “Joe and Eddie. Go!”

Barry doesn’t need me to tell him twice – he disappears with a gust of wind, and I take off running towards the commotion. As I ran, I could feel my heart rate increase and the energy thrumming through my veins begin to climb. The same feeling that I had this morning – had it really only been this morning? – wells up inside of my chest and I grab onto it, feeling the electricity in my brain surge.

And just in time, too, as everything seems to happen at once – Barry shoves a piece of tornado debris that was headed straight for Joe out of the way, and Joe uses the opportunity to break cover and raise his gun directly at the tornado…just as Mardon notices him.

“ **Joe, get down!”** I shout, my voice echoes across the field. Thankfully, Joe ducks, and I skid to a stop in front of the cop car and turn my attention to the growing tornado, the center of which held Mark Mardon himself.

Mardon, unfortunately, notices me. With a wave of his hand, a blast of wind slams into me, tossing me clear over the cop car and into a nearby barn.

Being thrown through the side of a barn was a new feeling, I had to admit. Pain erupted in my entire back, and I was pretty sure I might’ve sprained something on impact. A small groan escapes my lips as I push a splintered piece of wood off my torso.

_“Ellie, are you good?”_ Cisco’s voice asks in my ear.

I jerk upright with a gasp. “Cisco, what the-”

_“Yeah, I forgot to tell you – I installed a multi-link comm unit in both the suits. Are you good? Your vitals spiked for a second.”_

“Being tossed like a spare tumbleweed will do that to you,” I grunt as I pick myself up and shake myself off. “Barry, can you hear me? How are things looking out there?”

_“It’s gotten a little rough,”_ he reports breathlessly.

I climb back through the hole I’d made to find that ‘a little rough’ was the understatement of the century.

Mardon's tornado had expanded into an absolute monster; it had to be at least a Category 4, with shrieking winds that tossed dirt and debris around like a giant blender. The cop car that Joe and Eddie had arrived in was tipped onto its side, and I could only see one person moving. Through all the chaos, Barry was only a blur of lightning, darting around the center of the disaster in search of any way to get to Mardon himself.

Quickly deciding that he had that under control, I hurry over to the car and kneel next to the prone figure of Eddie Thawne. "Come on, come on," I mutter desperately as I feel for a pulse. "Iris will kill me if you die on my watch. Not that she'd know it's me of course, but still."

It takes a moment, but I eventually find a steady pulse and sit back with a relieved sigh. "Thawne's alive, guys, but he's out cold."

_"We can't get an ambulance there until Mardon is contained,"_ Caitlin informs us.

_“We need to end this now,”_ Barry pants. _“Before he gets any bigger.”_

“Agreed,” I nod, standing up and moving over to the overturned police car, hoisting myself up about a foot to see over the top. “But, um, how do we do that?”

Silence falls over the comms, the only other sound being the howling winds accompanied the occasional crash as Mardon’s tornado continues to grow.

Barry suddenly appears on the other side of the car, chest heaving. _“What if I unwind it?”_

“Unwind...the tornado?” I ask skeptically. “Do you even you how fast you'd have to run?”

_“700 miles per hour,”_ Caitlin supplies. _“Barry, your body might not be able to handle those speeds.”_

Barry, still looking exhausted, looks back at me, at the barn, and then at the tornado before declaring, _“I have to try,”_ and disappearing with a gust of wind.

I watch the streak of lightning encircle the base of the tornado with both growing excitement and a sinking feeling.

“What if he can't do it?” I ask Cisco and Caitlin quietly, but with a frantic edge. “What do I do if he can't do it?”

_“You could talk Mardon down,”_ Cisco offers.

“It's worth a shot,” I sigh and try to find the power I'd felt earlier, but all I come up with is fuzzy, white-noise mental static. “It's not working, guys. Guys?!”

_“Ms. Allen, calm down,”_ Dr. Wells suddenly commands. _“You're going into shock. Take a deep breath.”_

I suck in a deep breath and then slowly let it out, repeating the process one more time before the panic invading my chest begins to recede. “Now what? My power still isn't working.”

There's a slight pause before a sigh sounds on the comms and Wells says, _“Ellie, I was wrong about you earlier. You are not simply someone who happened to get struck by lightning; you are a remarkable young woman with the ability to save this city and right my wrongs. That ability does not hinge on adrenaline - every ounce of this power begins and ends with you. Now, do you want to help your brother or not?”_

“Of course I do,” I answer without hesitation.

_“Then you need to close your eyes and focus on your power. Can you do that?”_

I nod, even though he can't see me, and close my eyes, recalling every time I'd used my powers and the way the wave of energy had crashed into me, flooding my system with an indescribable amount of power, completely raw and begging to be harnessed, to be _used_ in some way.

I take a deep breath and visualize that entire feeling as a sphere of energy sitting in my chest. I imagine myself reaching out to grab that energy, pushing it to the surface with every bit of strength I could manage.

My eyes fly open and I inhale sharply as a rush of power suddenly crashes into me, but before I can say anything, a red blur shoots past me and Barry suddenly appears, on his knees and breathing heavily.

“I can’t do it!” he gasps. “He’s too powerful.”

I hop down from the cop car and crouch down next to my brother. “Barry? Bear. **Look at me.** ”

Barry’s eyes turn silver beneath the cowl as they find mine, and he holds my gaze even after they turn back to green.

“You _can_ do this,” I correct him firmly. “You’ve got this, you hear me? You’re smarter and faster than some…” I peer over the top of the car before crouching back down. “Some petty thief with a god complex.”

Barry lets out a weak chuckle at that, but he doesn’t look entirely convinced. “I can’t do this alone.”

“If you think I’m letting you have all the fun, you’re dead wrong,” I scoff. “I’m not letting you do this alone.” I open my mouth but pause, suddenly remembering the three other people listening to what I was saying. “Cisco?”

_“Here. Whatcha need?”_

“I need you to turn the comms off. Just for thirty seconds!” I explain as Caitlin and Dr. Wells begin to protest violently. “Thirty seconds, and then you can turn them back on. Please.”

There’s a long pause of silence before Dr. Wells sighs and says, _“Thirty seconds,”_ and the comms go dead.

“Barry, listen,” I sigh, tugging at my collar. “I know…I know we haven’t been as close as we used to lately, but if we’re actually going to do this, we can’t do it alone. We do this together or not at all, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Barry nods. “Together.”

“Good.” I grin and stand up, offering a hand. “Now, let’s go kick some punk ass, hm?”

Barry nods just as the comms come back online with a sharp beep.

_“Everyone still alive?”_ Cisco asks lightly.

“We’re good,” Barry assures him, squaring his shoulders. “I’m going to unwind Mardon’s tornado. Once I’m done, Ellie, you take him down.”

“Got it,” I reply, glancing down at Eddie one last time before I retake my perch on the underside of the police car. I watch with bated breath as a streak of lightning circles the tornado once, twice, three times – and the tornado tears itself apart, dust and debris radiating out from the epicenter like a miniature explosion.

Mardon, now defenseless, is left standing in the middle of an empty field, and to be honest, he doesn’t look like anything impressive as he faces Barry.

“I didn’t think there was anyone like me,” he says, reaching into his pocket for something.

“I’m not like you,” Barry counters, both on the farm and through the comms. “You’re a murderer.”

“Maybe I am,” Mardon says, and he brings his hand out of his pocket with a gun primed; he aims it directly at Barry’s face, and I lurch into action.

“ **Mardon!** ” I shout. “ **Look at me!** ”

The metahuman’s eyes blink silver as he turns his attention to me, but the effect of my powers doesn’t last long, and my heart skips a beat as Mardon raises the gun at _me_ instead.

But before I can act, a gunshot echoes across the field and Mardon drops to the ground with a pool of red blooming beneath him. I whirl around to see Joe standing a few yards away, gun still raised.

I quickly scramble off my perch and across the field, wrapping Joe in a tight a hug as I could manage. The hug was probably disgusting, as I smelled to high heaven and felt sticky all over – plus the suit was beginning to chafe – but Joe wraps his arms around me anyway.

Barry trudges over and turns the whole affair into a group hug, but the body heat we both emitted eventually became too much to be comfortable and we step apart.

“What you can do…it was the lightning bolt, wasn’t it?” Joe asks wearily.

“Sorta,” I admit.

Joe lets that settle for a quiet moment before sighing. “I’m sorry. Both of you, I’m sorry. For not believing you about that night. I used to think it was some psychological thing, just two kids protecting themselves, but now…”

I glance back at Mardon’s corpse. “Yeah.”

“I’ll take another look at your mom’s case, but I need you two to do something for me,” Joe bargains.

“Anything,” Barry promises.

“I need you to not tell Iris about what you can do,” he requests.

I open my mouth to protest – personally, I was all for immediately keeping Iris in the loop – but Barry beats me to the punch.

“Promise.”

I side-eye him, but he silences me with a look. I quickly squash down my annoyance, and it leaves way for only exhaustion – I was wanted food, a shower, and to get this suit off, and not particularly in that order.

I turn to Barry to see the same weariness reflected in his eyes, and my lips curve into a hopeful grin. “Looks like our job is done. Take me back to HQ?”

Barry smiles. “My pleasure.”


	8. Gear Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys - so sorry about the late chapter, but my computer's been having all sorts of connectivity problems lately, so I'm not sure how consistent updates will be until I fix that.
> 
> On a second note: this chapter is a monster. Sorry about the length, but I couldn't find a good place to end this.
> 
> Shoutout to Goodspark for commenting on that last chapter - I know I've said this already, but thanks for the support! And thank you to everyone else who's left kudos or even read this so far.

STAR Labs had locker room showers, more hot water than it knows what to do with, and a bioengineer with a medical degree that, despite her deepest protests, is gracious enough to make a Big Belly Burger run, and I make full use of all of the above.

By the time I was showered, fed, and wearing a set of STAR Labs sweats, the complete exhaustion I had felt earlier had retreated back to a decent level, but I was still too jittery to sleep – I felt like I’d just had a double shot of straight espresso. Going home to an empty apartment didn’t seem too inviting either, so I did the next best thing: I grabbed the super suit and looked for Cisco Ramon.

With the help of Dr. Wells and his directions, I end up tracking the other engineer down to his workshop, which was just below the cortex. Cisco doesn’t even look up as I step through the doorway, deeply enthralled by whatever he was working on.

I raise a hand to knock on the doorframe a few times. “Can I come in?”

Cisco whips his head up and grins. “Hey, here to return the suit?”

“Yeah, but I’ve got a few complaints,” I admit, running the leathery-feeling fabric between my fingers. “If you don’t mind.”

“Shoot.”

“One, I was sweating like crazy under that and it itches, so if you could look into a water-resistant lining, that’d be great.”

Cisco nods and scribbles something down in a notepad.

“Two, it bunched,” I continue. “And my hair itched – I don’t like the full cowl, do you think we could do just an eye mask or something? Also, red is _not_ my color.”

“Noted,” Cisco nods, catching the bundle of fabric as I toss it to him. “Your suit’s almost done, I just need to add in this stuff and you’ll be good to go. Oh, and I was thinking – if you’re gonna be a superhero, you need a kick-ass name, like…Hypno-Girl or something.”

“I’m not calling myself Hypno-Girl,” I laugh as I take a seat on one of the tables after checking it for any sharp, explosive, or otherwise dangerous objects. “That sounds like something a five-year-old could come up with.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a work in progress,” he defends. “I’ll come up with something better, wait and see.”

I hum noncommittally as I lean over to try and get a better look at what it is that has Cisco so absorbed. “Whatcha doing?”

“Working on a piece of tech for you,” he explains. When I try to get a better look, he hunches over and glares at me. “No, no, no, this is a ‘do not open until December 25th’ type thing.”

“Fine.” I roll my eyes dramatically. “You ruin all my fun. Speaking of fun, do you have anything I can do while you work on my suit?”

“Sure, do you know how to work on motorcycles?”

“Only since I was a teenager,” I scoff.

“Great. I haven’t had a chance to start on the bike you talked about since I am only one man – albeit with _superb_ hair – and redesigning a complex tri-polymer ain’t exactly easy,” he points out. “If you wanna start drawing up the schematics for what you’ve got planned, you can work over there.” He points at a table near the back of the room.

I nod and make my way over to my spot, grabbing some blank blueprints and a pencil. I’d started taking engineering classes in high school, and I hadn’t designed much of anything since college – my day job requires more of the physics side of things – but it quickly came back to me, like riding a very complex bike.

Cisco and I continue to trade ideas back and forth for a while, and I found that I liked working alongside him; he was a far from the stuffy, scholarly type as you could get, and I was reminded of some of my more manageable lab partners at Starling City University.

After about an hour and a half of work, I had basic sketches of the wheels and chassis of the bike, but I had hit a snag with the engine – it wasn’t going as fast as it needed to, but in order to make it do that, I would need to get my hands on technology that might not even exist yet.

I release a heavy sigh as I rub a hand over my eyes. “Damn it.”

“You alright over there?” Cisco asks, looking up from his work.

“Yeah,” I sigh. “But I think I’m gonna head home. It’s been a bit of a long day.” I roll up my plans and tuck them under my arm, reaching for some of the others before I stop. “Is it okay if I take these?”

“What? Oh, sure,” Cisco nods as he glances up briefly. “G’night.”

“Night,” I murmur in response, shuffling down the hallway towards the stairs. My mind was a million miles away, buzzing with schematics and solutions while I made my way down the hall, which was probably why I didn’t see Dr. Wells coming and literally tripped over him, landing face-first.

“Oh my god,” I gasp as I scramble to my feet, collecting the papers that had gone flying when I fell. “Are you okay? I am so sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going – I really need to work on that.”

“It’s alright,” Dr. Wells assures me with an odd half-smile. “I’m not hurt. Where was your mind just then?”

“Oh, um, Cisco and I are working on something,” I explain, shuffling the designs in my hands. “For the superhero…thing. Are we calling it a job? Am I moonlighting right now?”

“Ms. Allen. May I see the plans?”

“Ah, right,” I stutter, thumbing through the plans until I find the ones for the motorcycle and hand them over. “Here.”

Wells takes them with a nod and looks them over in relative silence, and I anxiously shift my weight from foot to foot while I wait for his verdict, feeling like I was either in court or high school again.

Just as I thought I would explode from pure anxiety, Dr. Wells looks up. “This is excellent work, Ellie.”

I nod silently, internally screaming because _the_ Dr. Harrison Wells just complimented my work, which was something I’d dreamed of since I was, like, ten.

“I assume you’re attempting to increase the speed of the engine?” he asks, and I nod again.

“If I’m going to be out there with Barry, I need to be as fast as possible,” I explain. “I mean, I’m not expecting to go as fast as him, but I can’t let Barry get a half-hour head start on everything either.”

“Of course not,” Wells agrees. “You know, if you were to replace the titanium in the engine with a magnesium alloy, it would lighten the entire structure by 35% while keeping the structural integrity intact.”

“Of course,” I groan. “I’m an idiot. If the chassis is lighter, it’ll increase the available speed exponentially. And given that I’m already using the fastest motor I can get my hands on, an exponential increase is the only logical solution.”

Wells nods and begins to move down the hallway, and I fall into step as he continues talking.

“Simple gasoline won't work, of course, but if you were to convert the system to a more efficient fuel…”

“…it would increase the speed on top of the weight problem,” I finish, flipping through my schematics to double-check the numbers. “I’ll have to do some research later, but this should increase the speed of the bike by 50% overall…” I trail off as the elevator comes into view. “Thank you.”

“It’s no issue, really; I’m a scientist, Ellie,” Wells reminds me. “This is what I do.”

I nod and press the elevator button, leaning against the wall as I wait. “Oh, and before I forget, I wanted to apologize if I’ve come off too harsh since waking up. I know you helped me and Barry while we were out, and I’ve wanted to meet you just as much as Barry has, but…” I give a half-hearted shrug. “You know what they say about meeting your heroes.”

“Absolutely,” Wells agrees. “I’ve suffered a few disappointments in that area myself, so I don’t blame you for not trusting me right away. In fact, that skill – that wariness – may serve you well in the future, Ms. Allen. Always remember to be careful who you trust, especially in your new line of work.”

“I will,” I reply just as the elevator arrives on our floor. “Are you going up, or…?”

“No, no, I have something I need to attend to.” Wells backs away, shaking his head. “Have a good night, Ms. Allen.”

“You too,” I call. The elevator doors slide shut, and I sag against the opposite wall – the exhaustion I’d felt earlier had returned with a vengeance.

Suddenly, my empty apartment didn’t feel so bad anymore.

* * *

Over the course of the next few days, I received a crash-course of sorts in Superhero 101: How to Balance Your Day Job with Your Night Job – A Written Guide.

I was quickly finding that balancing Ellie Allen, CSI, with Ellie Allen, currently unnamed superhero, was harder than it looked; hiding that struggle from people I loved, like Iris and Joe, was nearly impossible. Luckily, Barry and I had developed an impromptu system – whenever one of us was out on patrol or doing anything otherwise superhero-related, the other one would be in charge with covering with the CCPD in general. For instance, the day after fighting Mardon, Barry stopped three muggings and was late to work, so I told Joe that his alarm was broken. When I overstayed my lunch break at STAR Labs to work on my motorcycle, Barry told everyone that the line at Big Belly Burger had been longer than expected.

Don’t get me wrong – I hated lying to the Wests, Iris especially, but if this was what Joe wanted, then this is what I would do.

Two days after Clyde Mardon’s death found me in the lab, alone, when Joe walked in and immediately asked, “Hey, where’s Barry?”

“He’s with Iris,” I answer without looking up from the analysis I was running. “There’s some scientific award ceremony for Stagg Industries at CCU that Iris needs to cover and Barry went along to cover the scientific jargon.”

“And you didn’t go?” Joe asks, sitting down in Barry’s chair. “Sounds right up your alley.”

“It is, but they didn’t need me,” I admit with a shrug. “And I had work to do here. Plus, even I get tired of watching the two of them dance around each other all the time,” I add with an eye-roll. “It’s sickeningly sweet.”

“I know the feeling,” Joe chuckles. “I could see that before you did.”

“I doubt that,” I joke. “I’m Barry’s twin, remember? Twin-telepathy and all that.”

“Oh, come on,” Joe scoffs. “You disproved that when you were ten.”

I give a theatric sigh as I finish the analysis, bag and sign the results, and place the case in my ‘done’ pile. I plop down in my chair and face my foster-father. “Is there a reason you stopped by? Other than to find Barry?”

“No, but while I’m down here, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

I lean forward in my seat. “What’s up?”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time over at STAR Labs since you woke up,” he begins slowly. “I know you said you were fine, but you’re starting to worry me. Are you sure I can’t come with you to an appointment or something?”

I shake my head. “I’m fine, I promise. It’s less about my appointments anymore, and more because I’ve made friends over there – they don’t get a lot of free time, cleaning up after everything, so I stop by when I can,” I explain, the half-truth rolling off my tongue.

“These are friends worth skipping work for?” Joe asks skeptically.

I shrug. “I don’t have very many, so…yes? I mean, they saved my life, so…”

“That they did,” Joe concedes. “So that’s it? You’re just making friends?”

I nod.

“Because you had me worried, when I saw what you could do,” Joe admits. “I know how much you loved comic books as a kid, but I don’t want you getting any big ideas about being a hero of some sort. That kind of vigilantism – it isn't like it is in the movies. Promise me you won't get involved with any of that.”

I don’t answer right away. I stand up and turn my back to Joe, busily shuffling some case files around before I can muster up the courage to say, “Of course I won't, Joe.”

“Good.” Barry’s chair squeaks as Joe moves around in it, and I turn around to see him standing just to the side of our desks. “Now, how about we go grab some pizza and wait for Barry and Iris to get home? My treat.”

“Sure,” I grin. “I’m starv-” I’m cut off by the shrill ringing of my cell phone, and I grab it off my desk to see Cisco’s grinning face staring up at me. “Or, um, I could take this. Sorry, just gimme a second?”

Joe nods, and I exit the lab and turn a few feet down the hallway before hitting the ‘answer’ button. “Hey, Cisco, is everything okay?”

 _“It’s ready,”_ Cisco practically shouts. _“It’s finished.”_

“What do you – wait,” I pause. “What’s finished? The bike or the suit?”

 _“The suit,”_ he clarifies. _“It’s done and it’s beautiful. How fast can you be down here?”_

“Uh…” I glance back down the hall at the lab, where Joe was waiting. “Twenty minutes, tops.”

_“Great, see you then.”_

I bid him goodbye and hang up, making my way back to the lab. “Hey, Joe, I think I’m gonna have to pass on that pizza.”

“Everything okay?” Joe asks, eyes tracking me as I gather my jacket and bag.

“Fine, something’s just come up with a friend,” I explain shortly. “Rain check?”

“Sure,” Joe replies slowly, as if he’s still not sure what was going on, but I’m already out the door.

The usual twenty-minute walk to STAR Labs only takes me about ten, and I immediately bypass the cortex for the lower-level workshop. “Cisco!”

“In here!” a voice calls from a side room, and I follow it to see the STAR Labs engineer standing proudly in front of a tarp-covered dummy. “You made it.”

“Wouldn’t miss this for the world,” I quip, unable to keep the massive grin off my face. “It’s like Christmas, only earlier and more necessary.”

Cisco laughs as he grabs the tarp, almost teasing me for a moment before he pulls it off with a grand gesture – and reveals what is possibly the most beautiful piece of technology I’d ever seen.

The suit covering the dummy is snug in a way that reminded me of the Black Widow, from the comics – skintight, but only out of pure practicality. The body of the suit is a light silver color that almost seems to shine in the light, and it’s accompanied by a belt that’s a darker, matte gray, like the color of steel. But what draws my attention the most was the hood – it strongly reminded me of Oliver’s, except for the fact that it was the same color as the belt and draped further down than his did. In the very center of the chest, though, there was a spiral embossed on the fabric, the metallic material glinting brightly.

“I figured it fit,” Cisco explains from behind me. “The spiral, I mean. You know how, in all the old cartoons, someone always got spirals in their eyes when they got hypnotized? Like in the Jungle Book, with that one snake – I figured that would fit, but I can always change it…”

“No,” I cut him off, taking a few steps forward to run my fingers over the emblem – _my_ emblem. “No, it’s perfect, can I go change now?”

“Sure,” Cisco confirms with a nod. “The zipper’s in the front.”

I nod and unzip the suit, pulling it off the mannequin and heading for the nearest bathroom. Once there, I quickly strip out of my work clothes – a blouse and a nicer pair of jeans – and into the suit.

My immediate reaction is that it fits like a glove, and I had to wonder where, exactly, Cisco had gotten my measurements. My second reaction was that the fabric was breathable, and a quick test proved that I could freely move all of my limbs without any bunching or chafing.

That, and a quick glance in the mirror showed that silver was _definitely_ more my color than red was.

Grinning to myself, I snatch up my clothes and make my way out of the bathroom, which led to me discovering a downside: I was only wearing socks. I’d forgotten to get the shoes that went with the suit – if there were any, I was sincerely hoping there were – from Cisco.

I make my way back to the workshop and express this to the engineer as I gingerly step over various pieces of equipment to sit on the edge of a table.

Cisco ducks behind his desk and comes back with a box, setting it down next to me. “Finishing touches,” he clarifies, reminding me of the dress designers on some of the shows Iris liked. He pulls out a pair of boots and gloves – both the same dark gray as the hood and belt – a long, thin box, and a smaller box.

I instantly reach for the boots, pulling them on and giving my toes an experimental wiggle. The shoes were comfortable and breathable, just like the rest of the suit; coming up to about mid-calf, they easily conformed to the curve of my leg, not allowing anything to slip between the suit and down my leg. The gloves went on next, and I was extremely pleased to see that they were also snug but in no way inhibited my dexterity. 

I hop down off the table and walk around the lab a few times to test the boots out. “Nice work, Cisco.”

“Oh girl, you haven’t even seen the best part,” Cisco quips with an exaggerated southern accent. He opens the larger box. “Boom.”

I walk back over to the table and peer into the box, which contained two identical metal rods, each about the length of my forearm and maybe an inch and a half in diameter.

“Pick one up,” Cisco prompts.

I tentatively reach out a hand, not entirely certain that I wasn’t going to get shocked or stabbed, but the only thing that happens when I pull one of the rods out of the box is a pleasant, warm humming, like a tiny car engine beneath my hand.

“What is it?” I ask curiously, not moving my hand.

“Biometrics. It’ll only turn on for you – I figured letting a bad guy getting his – or hers, their? Their hands on these bad boys would be very, very bad.”

I narrow my eyes suspiciously. “Why?”

“Flip the switch that’s about half an inch from your thumb,” Cisco instructs, and I flip my hand to see that there was indeed such a switch.

“I’m starting to get concerned over how well you know my sizes, Cisco. The size of my hands? Really?”

“3D scanning works wonders, dude.”

I gape at him for a few seconds before managing, “When the _fuck_ did you-”

“Just flip the damn switch!”

“Fine,” I grumble, flipping the switch as instructed. Suddenly, the end of the rod arcs and crackles with electricity, and I immediately drop it with a yelp. “Cisco!”

“They’re electric batons,” he explains in a rush as I glare daggers across the table. “I mean, I figured you’d want something non-lethal, so I basically gave you some frickin’ huge tasers, but I can change it if you want. It’s all cool with me.”

“This…is fine,” I stutter after a moment of consideration, picking the forgotten baton and – gingerly, as if it was a grenade – setting it on the table. “Let’s move on to the next box. Is this one going to be sparky too? Or pointy? Shooty?”

“No,” he huffs, sliding it across the table. “This one isn't even mine – Barry gave it to me yesterday.”

Interest piqued, I reach for the box with more vigor, fairly confident that my brother wouldn’t want to cause me any serious harm. Flipping the box open, my eyes fall on something that takes my breath away just as much as – if not more than – the suit did.

Nestled in the dark fabric was a silver mask, just like the one Barry made Oliver. It was made for a slimmer face, obviously, but I knew Barry had made it nonetheless – and I knew that this was his personal contribution to my protection, his two cents, his _“stay safe out there, Ellie.”_

I run a thumb over the tiny spiral stitched with silver thread just between the eyes, trying to breathe around the lump forming in my throat and shoving down the tears that were threatening to spill over.

“Uh…Ellie?” I glance up to see Cisco watching me apprehensively, like I was a bomb that was about to explode in his face. “Are you going to cry? Do – can I go get Caitlin if you are?”

“’M not gonna cry,” I mumble hoarsely, but I still swipe a thumb over my eyes when Cisco turns his back for a moment before pulling on the mask – it fit perfectly, and I didn’t expect any less – and flipping up the hood. “How do I look?”

Cisco turns around, and the expression on his face can only be described as awe-struck – at me or the suit, I didn’t know.

“You look like a badass,” he laughs once he regains a bit of composure.

“Thank you,” I return cheekily. “I can’t wait until I can take it all out for a test run. Not that I want there to be crime, obviously,” I quickly backpedal, “but what’s the point of-”

I’m saved from any further explanation by my cell phone ringing, and I practically leap over the table to pick it up.

“Barry! How’s the presentation going?”

 _“Ellie!”_ Iris shouts, nearly making me jump out of my skin. _“Thank god, I need you to call Dad because there are men with guns and they’re shooting and I can’t find Barry!”_

“Wait, Iris, slow down,” I command calmly, even as my heart skips a beat. “Who’s doing _what_ now?”

_“Men – with ski masks – they had guns and demanded all of our jewelry and shot a security guard-”_

“Okay, are _you_ in any danger right now? And where’s Barry?” I tack on, almost as an afterthought, as I realized that Barry should’ve run in – literally – to save the day by now. Either way, I knew I was going to be there, and I glance up at Cisco and mouth _‘shooting’._

A look of panic immediately takes over the other engineer’s face, only to be replaced by an urgent expression as he grabs my batons and leaves the room, waving for me to follow. I turn and accompany him into the cortex, all the while listening to Iris explain that Barry had been there one moment and gone the next.

“I’ll get help,” I assure her. “Help will be there soon, just stay calm.”

 _“Okay, just find Bar-”_ Iris never finishes the sentence – there’s some loud scuffling sounds and some shouting before the line goes dead.

“Iris?” I ask as my heart rate skyrockets. “Iris!”

Nothing. I slam my phone down on the table with a string of colorful swears. “ _Cisco-”_

“There are reports of three gunmen shooting up CCU as we speak,” he reports hurriedly. “It’s only two blocks away – you should be able to run there.”

I nod and take off for the stairs, but Cisco stops me in the doorway. “Wait!”

I whip around, fully prepared to bite his head off, but Cisco just holds up my batons. “These stick to magnets in your belt and near your knee. Remember the switch – and take this,” he advises, holding out something that looked like a black hearing aid.

I nod quickly and put it on, clipping the batons to my belt before I take off again, running as fast as I could to the scene. It only takes me about five minutes to get there – which was astounding, given my previous track record as far as athletics were concerned.

I skid to a stop in front of the university to find a much calmer scene than I’d expected – the two guards at the door weren’t good news, but it could be worse.

 _“How’s it look?”_ Cisco asks.

“Just two thugs, I got this,” I assure him. “Inside may be a different story. Do you have an ETA on the cops?”

_“Five minutes. Any sign of Barry?”_

“Not yet,” I whisper as I creep closer to the doors. “I’m hoping he’s already inside.”

Cisco doesn’t say anything, and I take that as a green light. As I get within a reasonable distance of the guards, I duck behind a cement ledge and pull one of the batons from my belt. I switch it on, watching it spark without dropping it this time.

I take a deep breath and look up at the guards; they were about ten feet away. I tighten my hand around the baton and lift it up, squinting at the guard closest to me as I judge my aim. After a moment of tension, I lift the baton – end still sparking – and fling it at the guard’s head.

That part of the plan works – the first guard spams and drops like a sack of potatoes. But then things start to go sour: the baton flies off in a random direction, leaving me down a weapon, and the second guard looks up and meets my eyes.

And the, because my situation wasn’t already horrible: Guard Number Two shudders and suddenly, there’s Guard(s) Number Three, Four, Five, and Six.

“ _Shit_ ,” I hiss, immediately diving beneath my cover. “Cisco, it’s a metahuman.”

 _“What?”_ he balks. _“What – what is it?”_

“Clones,” I groan, peering over the top of the planter box to make sure that yep, there were still _six._ “Six clones, I’m not sure if there’s a limit.”

 _“I suggest you haul ass,”_ Cisco says. _“You can’t take on six grown men_ with guns _by yourself.”_

“Iris is still in there!” I protest in a whisper-shout. “She’s scared and possibly hurt, and Barry might be facing who knows how many more clones inside. I’m not _leaving._ ”

There’s a long pause before Cisco sighs and resignedly orders me to be careful.

“I’ll try,” I promise before unhooking the second baton from my belt and feeling it hum to life underneath my hand as I stand up and lunge at the nearest guard.

I have the element of surprise on my side, so Guard One goes down just with a punch to the face and a taser to the neck. Two reaches for his gun, but I stop him with a quick “ **Don’t do that,** ” and whack him around the head. Three reaches for his gun before I can stop him, so I improvise with a messy tackle.

That much works. But then Three gets up before I can and slams his foot into my ribs, and I’m fairly sure I hear something snap. I manage to scramble to my feet just in time to avoid another kick, but then something odd happens – a sudden wave of nausea slams into me from out of nowhere, accompanied by a lightheadedness that made the world spin.

Three takes advantage of my distraction to slam a fist into my face. I hit the pavement hard, the baton bouncing out of my hand and off to some unknown location. Now weaponless, I start lashing out with my hands and feet – I land a few punches here and there, but Cisco was right; I was no match for four grown men with guns.

Actually, scratch that – _six_ grown men. These things were like rabbits.

 _Violent rabbits,_ a little voice in my head chimes. _Rabbits that want to kill you. Rabbits that are currently beating the shit out of you._

I grimace – partly at that ever-so-helpful revelation, partly because one of the men lands a kick to my head, causing black spots to swarm my vision.

 _“Ellie!”_ Cisco shouts in my earpiece. _“Your vitals are all over the place, get out of there now!”_

I open my mouth, but a punch to the stomach knocks the air out of my lungs. I just barely manage to croak out a cry for help before a particularly lucky man lands a kick to the face and the world turns black.


	9. A Difficult Mentor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, here's the newest chapter - sorry for the wait. I got a bit distracted and this just didn't want to come out. Anyway, here it is, and I should probably mention that this is the first chapter that crosses over with Arrow, so I'll be putting the story into both categories for future reference. 
> 
> Shoutout to BadWolf1989 for reviewing the last chapter, thank you so much!

The first thing I notice when I come to is that the surface under my head was much softer than the concrete I’d passed out on, and for one brief, fleeting moment, I can almost pretend that I’m safely in my bed – I’m about to get up for work and the past twenty-four hours never happened.

And then reality rears its ugly head and reminds me that, no, that wasn’t it. I’d just gotten the ass-kicking of the century from a man that could clone himself, because _that_ was my life now.

I pull my eyes open and squint at the blurry white ceiling above me. The smell of antiseptic was strong, and combined with the faint traces of rubber and ozone, I was beginning to get an idea of where I was. My theory is only backed up by the red blur that appears above me and hands me my glasses.

“Here,” Caitlin’s voice says. “I removed your contacts so they wouldn’t wrinkle while you were out.”

“Thanks,” I mumble, pulling them on and blinking a few times to help my eyes adjust to the new clarity. “I should probably stick to contacts.”

“That would probably be best,” Dr. Wells agrees from somewhere to my right.

I go to push myself into a sitting position, but Caitlin stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t move too quickly, you’re still healing.”

I open my mouth to protest, but as I shift my weight, a red-hot spike of pain shoots up my side and I fall back with a sharp cry.

“I _told_ you,” Caitlin admonishes sternly. “You’re still healing.”

“You can’t give me anything?” I groan.

“No,” a voice echoes from my left, and I gingerly turn my head to see Barry on the other hospital bed.

“You look like hell,” I gasp. “What happened?”

“That is quite the interesting story,” Dr. Wells interjects. “As it turns out, you and your brother have somewhat of a link.”

“A link?” I repeat, blinking. “Like…what? Can I read his mind? I don’t _want_ to read his mind.”

“You can’t read my mind,” Barry assures me. “I don’t understand all of it, but I don’t think it’s that specific.”

I give him a confused look and glance at Caitlin, then Cisco, then Wells. “How specific or non-specific are we talking here? Is it like Professor X-type telepathy or just a ‘you’re talking about me, I can tell’ type thing?”

“We’re not entirely sure,” Wells admits. “You have to remember, Ms. Allen, that I know just as much as you do about your abilities. But by my best estimate, the link between the two of you deals with sensations.”

I slowly blink and send Caitlin a confused look.

“Your brains are trading information at an extremely increased rate,” she explains. “It’s a byproduct of both Barry’s speed and your control over mental functions, as well as the genetic link that already exists between the two of you.”

“So it _is_ Twin Telepathy?” I ask, tilting my head.

“Not exactly.” Caitlin shakes her head. “There’s always been some debate in the scientific community over whether or not twin siblings share any extra bonds that ordinary siblings don’t. Most of the theories were disproven a few decades, but that’s excluding meta-humans, of course.”

“So you’re saying that when the Particle Accelerator exploded, the dark matter only strengthened a twin-thing that was already there?” Barry asks, and after Dr. Wells nods, he continues, “And when you say ‘sensations’, what do you mean? Specifically?”

“We’re not entirely sure,” Dr. Wells confesses. “Although we do currently know it’s related to physical sensations, since you here could feel every hit that Ellie took earlier-”

“Wait,” I interrupt, wide-eyed as I stare at my brother. “You could feel all of that? All of it?”

Barry nods, and I quickly check him over for any wounds. I couldn’t see any outside of his t-shirt and sweats, but one could never be too careful.

“The link doesn’t transfer the physical marks,” Dr. Wells clarifies, as if he could sense my thoughts. “Only a dulled version of the pain the other person suffered.”

“Still,” I grouse. “If I’m going to be out there getting my ass kicked – like today – then I don’t want to be worrying about _Barry_ feeling it too.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ll start researching ways to block the link,” Cisco offers, and I look over to see him fiddling with my mask. “For now, I’ve got to clean off the blood you got on my suit.”

“It’s _my_ suit,” I correct with a slight smirk. “I’m the one that wears it, remember?”

“Yeah, but I designed it,” he counters. “And I’ve got a patent on the material, so there.”

I huff out the beginnings out a laugh, quickly stopping as my chest throbs. “ _Ow_. Caitlin, are you sure you can’t give me anything?” I plead, looking up at the doctor.

“I’m sorry,” she sighs, eyes sympathetic. “I tried every drug I had, but your system burned through all of it before it could take effect.”

“Burned through?” I question.

“Do you remember when I told you that your powers were based off energy?” Dr. Wells asks, and at my nod, he continues, “Now that you’ve begun to fully grasp and use your abilities, that energy has begun to speed up your metabolism, rendering drugs such as morphine useless.”

“It also means you’ll have to eat a lot more to prevent hypoglycemia,” Caitlin adds. “Ellie, I’ve estimated your new required calorie count to be around 10,000 to 12,000 a day; Barry, yours is between 15,000 and 20,000 because of your speed.”

“That’s about 128 tacos,” Cisco informs us. “Or 93 chocolate bars.”

I do some quick mental math to come up with my own taco and/or chocolate count and then turn to Caitlin. “I feel bad for asking this, but…I won't get fat, right?”

This actually brings a smile to the doctor’s face, and she chuckles. “No. With the amount of energy running through your system, both of you could burn calories just sitting still, which is an accomplishment anyone would _die_ for.”

“You wish you were as hot as me,” I tease, full-out laughing at the face Caitlin makes until my ribs scream in protest and I fall back onto the hospital bed with a pained gasp.

Caitlin immediately switches back to doctor mode, rushing to my side and scanning my vitals for any problems. Apparently finding none, she simply advises, “Don’t exert yourself. Your ribs should be healed in about a week – a fifth of the time of a normal person – but until then, I want you to rest and not push yourself physically _in any way_. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I snark. “I hear you. Can I go home now? Just to sleep. Promise.”

Caitlin hesitates, looking to Dr. Wells for assistance, but I give her my best puppy-dog eyes and she caves with a sigh. “Fine. But at least let me drive you home, you shouldn’t be walking.”

I nod, and together with Cisco, the doctor eases me up and out of bed, instructing me to breathe through the pain and take short breaths. I slowly hobble to the door, and I almost make it outside before a familiar voice stops me in my tracks.

“Not so fast, young lady.”

I gulp as my heart plummets. That was the same tone Joe had used after I got my first school suspension when I was eleven-and-a-half, or after I crashed his car, or after any of the other particularly headstrong things I’d accomplished over my fourteen years with the Wests.

I slowly turn around to see my foster father waiting with his arms crossed. “Just what do you think _you’re_ doing?”

“Um, I was just going home,” I try. “To rest. Doctor’s orders,” I add, risking a hopeful glance at Caitlin, who quickly scrambles back a few steps to distance herself from the conversation.

“And why would you be resting?” Joe asks, not moving from his original, confrontational stance.

“I…am tired?”

“And you’ve got broken ribs,” he challenges. “Do I look like I was born yesterday, Ellie?”

“Um…no.”

There’s a long moment of silence as Joe waits for me to speak, to give an explanation; when I don’t, he gives me a frustrated look. “I thought I told you to not get involved with this – with this hero stuff!”

“I’m not!” I protest, but then I glance around the lab – at Barry, who’s still dressed in his suit, at my suit, which had been hung on a dummy off to the side of the room, and at my batons, which were resting on top of the computer terminal.

“Okay, I can explain,” I backpedal quickly. Joe raises an expectant eyebrow, and I realize that he actually _did_ want an explanation. “I can help people, Joe. I can _save_ people!”

“And what about saving yourself?” he argues. “You aren't invincible, Ellie! Just because you have the ability to mind control people doesn’t mean you’re suddenly an invincible hero!”

“I didn’t say I was!” I snap. “But Joe, look at what I’ve done – I’ve stopped muggings and a robbery and Mardon and I even saved _you_ , at the barn, if you remember correctly.”

“And all of it was _dangerous_!” Joe shouts. “All of this, Ellie – you could get yourself killed! You’re not a cop; you’re just a CSI. You’re just a kid!”

“A kid? Joe, I’m _twenty-four_ -”

“Twenty-five,” Barry mutters quietly.

“Fine, twenty-five,” I concede with an eye-roll. “Point is, I’m not a child, Joe, and you need to stop treating me like one! I’m not some helpless eleven-year-old anymore!”

“I don’t care how old you are, you’re still my kid!” Joe yells. “And I am _not_ letting you go out there, untrained and unprepared, to fight the crazy people in this city, Eleanor!”

“Don’t call me that,” I snarl. “You don’t get to call me that, Joe, because I’m _not_ your kid. You have no say in what I can or can’t do. I’m going to do this, whether you like it or not,” I announce boldly, turning on my heel and moving towards the door as fast as I could with broken ribs. Caitlin hurries after me, but whether it was because Joe had turned on Barry and was reaming him out now, or because she was worried about me as my doctor, I wasn’t sure.

She helps me into her little VW, and the drive back to my apartment is packed with stifling silence, save for me giving directions. Maybe twenty minutes after leaving STAR Labs, Caitlin puts her car in park and turns to me. “Are you okay? Mentally, I mean.”

“What?” I blink. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” she worries, eyebrows scrunching. “I heard what Joe said back there.”

“I said I’m fine,” I repeat. “I’ll be okay.”

Caitlin holds my gaze for a moment longer before nodding and circling the car to help me out and into my apartment building.

I will forever be thankful that no matter how crappy my apartment building is, it did have an elevator, and the journey up to my apartment unit only takes another moment and minimal pain on my part. Caitlin quickly situates me on my couch, making sure I had plenty of pillows and a blanket and generally fussing until I bat her away with an annoyed look.

“Caitlin, I’m _fine._ I don’t think I have any more pillows left in this apartment – or the entire building.”

“Okay, I’m sorry, just…make sure to get some rest, alright? Do you want me to come and get you in the morning?”

I shake my head. “I can probably get Barry to come and get me, since we’re going to the same place anyway. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, right? We need to get to work on finding our cloner.”

She nods. “Right. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

I nod and give her a little wave as the door closes behind her. I wait until her footsteps fade down the hall before kicking off the blanket and swinging my legs over the side of the couch, groaning in pain as I did so. Grimacing, I hobble my way into the bathroom – a slow process, as my ribs screamed and pain jolted through my body, making me stop every few feet.

Walk. Stop. Try not to collapse. Repeat.

Finally, I pull my exhausted, throbbing body into the bathroom, leaning heavily on the edge of the sink. Moving with a careful deliberateness – and a lot of squirming – I pull my sweatshirt over my head, setting it down on the toilet.

The mirror gives me a great view of the bruises marring my torso: the main one stretched from a few inches below my armpit to just above my hip, but there were other spotted across my stomach and up my side – a rainbow of purple, blue, and red marks that made me look like I’d just been run through a meat processor.

“This is such a hopeful beginning,” I tell my reflection, scowling as I grab my sweatshirt and gently tug it on again. I limp back to the couch, wondering which Netflix series I should binge first, but I only get halfway to my destination before I stop, my eyes finding my phone.

I don’t exactly know what it was – maybe it was complete disregard for Caitlin’s orders, maybe it was a shove at Joe for what he had said earlier, and maybe it was something else entirely – that made me move, grab the phone, and dial a number that was quickly becoming familiar.

“Hi, Oliver? It’s Ellie. I wanted to ask you for a favor…no, nothing like that – it’s um…” I take a deep breath.

“I want you to train me.”

* * *

 

_“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We are now arriving at the Starling City Downtown Station. Repeat: Starling City Downtown Station, arriving now. Next stop, Starling City North…”_

I tune out the rest of the train announcement as I follow the rest of the disembarking crowd onto the platform, pulling my jacket a little tighter around my waist and wincing slightly as I did so. It had been about two days since the incident with the cloner – who was still unnamed, because STAR Labs was having difficulty catching a clone to run facial recognition on – and Caitlin had been right: my ribs were healing at a faster pace than normal, since it no longer hurt to breathe, but I was a long way from healed.

Which made what I was about to do very, _very_ stupid. Insurmountable levels of stupid.

Still, I shake my head and push that thought aside as I hail a cab, sliding in and giving the driver the address Oliver had given me. Convincing the older vigilante to show me how to fight had been one of the hardest things I’d ever done; first there was the _“yes, I’m sure”_ and the _“I have no idea what I’m getting into, but I’ll do it anyway”,_ followed closely by even _more_ reassurances that I did want to do this, and even after I pointed out that I’d either learn with his help or without it (and probably get my ass kicked _again_ in the process), all I got was a _“We’ll see. Be in Starling in two days.”_

So here I was, in Starling City, hours away from home. Luckily, it was a Saturday, so Singh wasn’t expecting me at work, and I’d already told Barry, Caitlin, Cisco, and Dr. Wells that I’d be out of town for the day visiting an “old friend” – which, technically, wasn’t a lie. Sorta.

“Miss?” The taxi driver’s voice pulls me from my thoughts. “We’re here.”

“Right, um, thanks,” I stammer, put down enough money to cover the fare and climbing out, giving the cab an absent wave as it drives off.

Looking up at where Oliver had chosen to keep his base, I couldn’t help but be impressed, even though I’d technically been here before. Verdant was a gigantic night club right smack in one the grittier parts of the city – Oliver had managed to put a building with all clean, smooth lines right in the middle of all the rust and gloominess of the surrounding area, which was a truly remarkable feat.

Except for the name. The name gets an amused snort and a head-shake as I hoist the duffel bag holding my gear higher onto my shoulder and make my way indoors.

The club was practically empty, given that it was just past eleven, and I quickly find Oliver waiting near the bar and hurry over. “Hey. Thanks for having me.”

“It was no problem,” he assures me. “Training you, however, is another matter. Come on,” he beckons, nodding towards the back of the club. I nod and follow him to the storeroom and into the basement.

“So, who named this place?” I ask curiously as I jog down the stairs.

“What?”

“The nightclub. Who named the nightclub?”

“Me and a friend of mine, about two years ago,” Oliver answers as he leans against one of the tables in the Arrowcave. “Why? What’s so important about what I name my nightclub – or, Thea’s nightclub, now.”

“Well,” I sigh dramatically. “I don’t know much French, but from what I remember from the classes I _didn’t_ sleep through in high school, I’m pretty sure ‘verdant’ means ‘green’ in French. Green. Which, I may point out, is the color of your suit, and your arrows, and your mask…honestly, the transparency there reaches stupid levels.”

“It is not stupid, it’s called ‘hiding in plain sight,’” he corrects. “What’s stupid, Ellie, is walking around in your day clothes with an unsecured duffel bag full of your gear.” He motions towards the bag I’d dropped on the table. “What if someone would have found it?”

“I’m sorry, not all of us have access to high-tech solutions just yet.” I roll my eyes and cross my arms. “Mr. Big-Shot Vigilante.”

Oliver rolls his eyes. “Okay, let’s get to the point: why are you here?”

“I…we talked about this on the phone, didn’t we?” I tell him. “I want you to train me. I want you to teach me how to fight, and I kinda need to learn fast.”

“Why?”

“Why do I want to learn or why do I want to do it fast?”

“Why do you want to do it fast?” he repeats. “Proper technique could take months or even years to learn.”

“I don’t have months,” I explain, taking a seat and pulling my shirt up just enough to show the bruising that had only faded slightly since Thursday. “I got my ass handed to me two days ago by a man who can _clone himself_ , Oliver. Do you think he’s gonna wait months for me to come back and fight him?”

Oliver shakes his head. “I’m not sure you should even be fighting _now,_ with the shape you’re in.”

“Too bad, no choice,” I tell him simply. “So are we gonna do this or what?”

Oliver meets my gaze and holds it, a stony look on his face as he stared me down for a moment. I didn’t know what he hoped to find on my face or in my expression, but I don’t look away. It pays off after a moment, when Oliver nods. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“Okay?” I repeat, blinking a few times. “Alrighty then.” I quickly shrug off my jacket and adjusting the athletic tank top I’d worn underneath. I look up to see Oliver watching me with an interested expression. “What?”

“You knew I’d say yes, didn’t you?” he asks, a slight accusation coloring his words. “You came prepared.”

I just shrug and smirk to myself as Oliver pulls off his own shirt, heading for the sparring mat in the corner. After a moment of stunned silence – because I was looking at _Oliver Queen shirtless,_ hello – I clear my throat and follow him over, commenting, “I hope you don’t expect me to workout shirtless too.”

Oliver’s lips twitch just slightly upwards, and I pat myself on the back until he beckons me forward to stand in front of him. “Okay, punch me?”

I give him a confused look. “You… _want_ me to punch you?”

“Just _do_ it,” he growls impatiently.

I shrug and aim a right hook at his face, but in the blink of an eye he’s caught the punch and I’m bent over double with my arm twisted behind my back and an unforgiving hand curled around my wrist.

“Ow. _Ow!_ ” I yelp, unable to find any way out of this situation. “What the hell?!”

“Again,” Oliver commands, letting me up but not answering my question as he resets himself.

I huff and throw another punch, this one at his stomach, but he catches it and twists, causing pain to shoot up my arm. “Ah!”

“Again,” is the only thing Oliver says.

It continues like that for a long while – I would punch, Oliver would block, and I’d end up on the floor again and again and _again._ I didn’t understand what he was trying to do – I knew Oliver had ulterior motives, I just couldn’t tell how repeatedly beating the living daylights out of me was going to achieve them.

Until, around the 45th round, when I’m slammed onto my stomach and the frustration building in my chest finally bubbles over. Snarling, I roll onto my back, raise my legs, and, bracing my shoulders on the floor, deliver a powerful kick straight to Oliver’s shins.

His minute stumble is almost worth it. _Almost._

But then, to my confusion, he almost looks…pleased? It’s the biggest grin I’d seen on his face. “Good.”

“Good?” I pant, still splayed on the floor. “You wanted to get kicked in the shins? You need to get out more.”

Oliver shakes his head and offers me a hand up. “The entire point of that was to see just how long you would go before breaking, and then when you did break, _how_ you did so – you didn’t yell and scream or throw a fit, you lashed out and put your anger to work.”

“Yeah, well,” I shrug as I brush myself off. “I learned a long time ago that throwing a hissy fit will get me absolutely nowhere.”

Oliver nods his agreement before pausing, holding up a finger, and disappearing off somewhere, returning a moment later with two bottles of water. “Here.”

“Thanks,” I mutter, downing a gulp of water before setting the bottle down. “What now?”

“Now, I can actually start training you,” he explains, moving back onto the mat. “Come on.”

“Yay, more beat-downs,” I say dryly, but I throw the first punch anyways.

This time is much different than the last; yes, Oliver goes block every single one of my punches, but he does so at a slightly slower pace, allowing me to see how each moved worked. There wasn’t much talking going on, of course, except for Oliver occasionally shouting out pointers like ‘Use your entire body when you move, not just your arms,’ or ‘Remember, anticipate, anticipate, anticipate!’ or ‘Widen your stance, you’re too unstable.’

And it worked. Eventually, I was able to block almost every one of the basic punches he threw and even counter a few; given that I didn’t think the cloner would be using advanced martial arts, I would probably be okay.

“Take a break,” Oliver says with a pleased look as I successfully block one of his punches and land a hit on his ribs. “Nice work, Ellie.”

“It’s all you.” I shake my head and raise my hands as I take another drink of water. “All I’ve got are scrappy street-fighting skills. You’re the one polishing them, if you will.”

Oliver hitches a hip up on the table next to me and gives me a contemplative look before asking, “You know the red archer I work with?”

“Uh, yeah. Does he have a name? An identity, I mean, not his civilian name, I don’t need to know his identity – his _actual_ identity, I mean-”

“Ellie,” Oliver cuts me off with a slight smirk. “You’re starting to sound like Felicity. To answer your question, I’ve been calling him Speedy.”

I choke on my water. “That is… _horrible._ If anyone’s ‘speedy’ around here, it’s my brother.”

“It’s a long story,” he defends. “My point is, when I first met him, all he had was rough skills, and look at him now. And speaking of names, what are they calling the two of you?”

I let out a long exhale. “Well, they’re calling him ‘the Streak’ at the moment, which is both bad and hilarious, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t have a name, given that my only public appearance in my official suit has been me getting beaten half to death, but Cisco likes Hypno-Girl,” I explain, giving Oliver a derisive look.

Oliver snorts at that and opens up his mouth, hopefully to offer a better suggestion, but he’s interrupted by a clatter sounding above our heads.

I bolt off the table, grabbing my bag as Oliver tenses, eyes fixed on the doorway and prepared for whatever might come through it.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but the only thing that comes through the door is a woman – two women, actually: a brunette woman carrying a blonde, bridal style. By the way Oliver relaxes slightly, neither is a threat, but something is still wrong.

“Sara?” he asks.

“Oliver,” the brunette gasps. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know where else to bring her-”

Oliver darts forward, taking the blonde woman from her arms and setting her down on the table where I’d just been sitting. I scurry out of the way, completely unnoticed and having no idea what was going on.

The brunette woman – Oliver calls her Laurel – is in an absolute panic, babbling something about arrows and her sister and begging Oliver to call someone, to help Sara – the blonde, I was assuming.

But the thing about being a CSI was that I’d seen my fair share of dead bodies. I was able to tell, definitively, if a person still had blood running through their veins.

And I knew, with absolute certainty, that the blonde woman – Sara – was dead.


	10. Clones & Complications

I was able to slip out of Oliver’s base without anyone noticing – everyone was too caught up in their grief to notice me slipping out the back, and to be honest, I was more than happy to leave them to it. I hadn’t known Laurel, the brunette, or Sara, the dead woman, very well when she was alive, so I didn’t have any right to act like I’d been close to either one when Sara was dead. They weren’t my people, I told myself, so they weren’t my problem.

So why, then, hadn’t I been able to get the sight of Sara’s dead body and the sound of Oliver’s voice when he called her name out of my head in the couple of days since then?

“El,” Barry calls, and I shake myself as I look up at him. “Yes?”

“Your analysis is done.” He points down at my computer, which was beeping madly. I nod and take a seat, opening up the results.

I’d been running tests on a blood sample Cisco had lifted off my mask after the meta-human attack at CCU about a week ago. If I could isolate the sample on a molecular level, we would be one step closer to finding out how this cloner – Cisco had started calling him “Captain Clone”, but I absolutely refused to use that – ticked.

“Where was your head?” Barry asks curiously from his desk. He was looking for anything we could use to identify the meta, starting with a possible DNA identification. “Just now, I mean. You look a million miles away.”

“No, just 600,” I mutter under my breath, shaking my head. “I’m fine,” I assure Barry at a normal volume.

“Does…does this have anything to do with where you were this weekend?” he asks tentatively. “You’ve been acting weird ever since. Spacey.”

“No, Bear,” I roll my eyes. “I told you, I was just visiting an old friend. This has nothing to do with that.”

“What ‘old friend’?” Barry asks suspiciously. “Don’t we have all the same friends?”

“What if it’s a friend from college?” I challenge. “I went to SCU, you went to CCU, we made different friends.”

“So are you saying you were in Starling City on Saturday?” he retorts. “Why didn’t you just tell me that straight away? Were you with-”

“ **Barry, stop with the game of twenty questions** ,” I snap, my voice echoing with my power. Barry’s eyes flicker from green to silver as he nods, and then back to green again as the effect of my command fades. As soon as it does, however, a wave of lightheadedness and nausea slams into me, forcing me to shut my eyes and lean back in my chair.

 _Wells told you this would happen,_ my conscience scolds. _He warned you not to use your powers until Caitlin can get the calorie problem solved._

“Um,” Barry says after a moment of silence, “does the reason you’ve been so tense have anything to do with why Oliver is calling you out of the blue?”

I crack open an eye and focus on my phone, which was lit up with Oliver Queen’s smiling face – it was a photo I’d snatched off his Wikipedia page.

“Uh, no,” I lie as I push myself out of my chair and head for the door. “Just a coincidence.”

“Is Oliver okay? Is Starling City-”

“Everything is fine, but I need to take this.” I excuse myself and step into the hallway, walking down the hall before I stop in a deserted corner and hit the ‘answer’ button. “Hello?”

_“Ellie? It’s Oliver.”_

“I know. Is everything okay? Is there something wrong?” I ask worriedly.

 _“You mean other than the fact that one of my teammates – one of my friends – is dead?”_ Oliver sighs, frustrated. _“No, there’s nothing wrong.”_

I bite my lip and stare at my shoes, because what did I say to that? What could I possibly say in response to that?

 _“I know you were there, Ellie,”_ he continues. _“I did see you leave, you know.”_

“I didn’t think anyone did,” I admit even as something in my chest lifts at the knowledge that Oliver was so aware of my presence, even in the midst of chaos. Or maybe he was just hyperaware of everyone? It probably wasn’t just me-

_“Ellie?”_

I clear my throat and pull myself back on track. “I – um, I’m really sorry. About…Sara?”

 _“Sara,”_ he confirms. _“Sara Lance. She was…a friend. A close friend.”_

“Oh,” I mutter. Normally, I’d crack a joke about Oliver actually having friends, but now was not the time or place. “I’m sorry.”

 _“Thank you,”_ Oliver says lowly before clearing his throat. _“But I didn’t call for condolences. Ellie, I need to ask you for a favor.”_

“What is it?” I ask eagerly, although a bit warily.

 _“You’re a CSI, right?”_ he asks. _“At the CCPD?”_

“Yeah, that is my day job. The, uh, the other one doesn’t exactly pay the bills. But what does that have to do with-” I pause as realization dawns on me. “Oliver, tell me you don’t want me to investigate Sara’s death.”

 _“I didn’t want to drag you into this, but I need someone I can trust,”_ he explains. _“My contacts within this city are limited at best, and SCPD isn't exactly high on the list of people I trust. And you’re one of the best in the field, right?”_

Even as the compliment sinks in, I run a hand over my face, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but given that you didn’t take this through official channels, I’m guessing you want this done off the books.”

_“As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Sara died in 2007. Do not tell anyone differently – you would put not only yourself but also your family in danger. Sara had dangerous people coming after her.”_

“Did one of those dangerous people catch up to her?” I ask, only partially to Oliver.

 _“That’s what I need you to find out. Will you do this, then?”_ he asks. When I don’t answer right away, he continues, in the smallest voice I’d ever heard him use, _“For me, Ellie.”_

I squeeze my eyes shut and forcefully exhale. “Fine. Fine, I’ll do it. For you – it’s payback for training me. But I’ll need some stuff,” I explain.

_“Like?”_

“Well…any and all DNA samples you can get, since I think transporting the…body…itself 600 miles under the radar is problematic. On the same note, I need a 3D scan of the body, if Felicity can send me one. The murder weapon, obviously, and any eye-witness accounts. And…” I let out a breath. “I can’t see the scene, so if you can – I don’t know – canvas it for me or something, that would be great.”

 _“Okay. I’ll have the necessary evidence sent to you as soon as possible,”_ he offers. _“Thank you, Ellie. And remember, don’t-”_

“-tell anyone, yeah, I got it,” I sigh. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my only legitimate job before Captain Singh kills me.”

_“Goodbye, Ellie.”_

“Bye, Oliver.” I sigh softly as the line goes dead and I pocket my phone. I make my way back to the lab, feeling about 300 pounds heavier than when I left it.

“What was that about?” Barry asks as I walk through the door. “Is Oliver okay? Does he need our help with something?”

“No, no, he’s fine, Starling City is fine, everyone is fine,” I assure him quickly – maybe too quickly. “Just – just do your job, Barry.”

“Ellie-”

“Barry, _please_ ,” I snap, not looking up front the analysis I was running on the cloner’s blood – or, the one I was _supposed_ to be running, anyway. It was what I was doing before Oliver called. We were trying to find out how the cloner, well, _cloned_ , but now all I could focus on were the images of Sara’s dead body flashing before my eyes like an extremely aggressive slideshow.

I press out a sigh between clenched teeth as I rub my temples. My first instinct said  _go see Joe_ , but Oliver had said not to tell anyone, said that telling anyone would mean putting them in danger.

 _You don’t have to_ tell _Joe,_ my conscience pointed out, and I looked over my monitor at Barry. “Do you know where Joe is?”

“No,” Barry sighs without looking up from his work. “I haven’t talked to him since Friday, and he still seems mad, but I think he’s downstairs.”

I nod and make a beeline for the door, taking the stairs two at a time as I make my way into the bullpen, only to find Joe’s desk empty.

I glance around the room and spot Singh just leaving his office. “Captain!” I call, hurrying to catch up to him. “Do you know where Joe is?”

“He’s off at Stagg Industries,” my boss informs me. “He and Thawne are gathering leads on the shooting. And before you ask, no, I’m not sure when he’ll be back – did you have results to deliver, Allen?”

“Oh, ah, no, sir.” I shake my head. “It was just for a personal matter, but it’s not urgent, at all, so I’ll just – just, uh, wait, I guess,” I stammer, backing away from Singh, who just shakes his head and mutters something under his breath as he walks away.

I shuffle my way over to Joe’s desk, taking in the familiar surroundings – his favorite “#1 Dad” mug that Iris gave him about ten years ago, a picture of Barry, Iris, and I at our high school graduation, and paperwork for a case he was working on – and take a seat in his chair, just for a moment. I needed to focus on something – _anything –_ else than work right now.

Luckily for me, a distraction arrives in the form of Iris, who walks through the front doors of the precinct, greets the receptionist with a sunny smile, and heads straight for her dad’s desk, only pausing slightly when she sees me instead.

“If you’re looking for your dad or your boyfriend, they aren't here at the moment,” I tell her, spinning the chair in lazy circles. “I’m sure they’ll be quick, though, so you’re probably welcome to wait.”

“No, I was looking for you, actually,” she corrects, and I lean forward in my chair as she continues, “Do you remember when you promised me you would sit down and help me decode some of the scientific jargon from Stagg’s presentation?”

“Yeah…” I nod, feeling slightly like I was walking into a trap. Iris had that _look_ on her face, the kind that reminded me of a spider luring flies into its web. “Why?”

“Because it’s been nearly a _week_ since Stagg’s presentation and I’ve barely seen you at all,” she replies. “Ellie, I needed your help on that assignment and you weren’t there, which means I now have to choose a new topic within 24 hours or I fail – right before midterms, too. And beyond that, I’ve been looking forward to spending time with you.”

I wince as I stare at the surface of Joe’s desk and scramble for a decent lie. “I – I’m really sorry, Iris, I’ve just been really busy with the shooting, and then with-” _getting my ass kicked, and then secretly training with the Arrow_ “-work since then, you know how busy it is around here.”

“Yeah, I do, but this is more than work. You’ve been acting weird ever since you woke up from the coma,” Iris argues. She leans in closer and lowers her voices. “Ellie, you know if you’re having issues adjusting or something, you can always talk to me, okay? After all, we’re Best Friends Forever, right?” she teases, sticking out a hand with her pinky outstretched.

“Forever,” I nod, bringing my pinky up to link it with hers, the familiar gesture driving down the last dredges of panic I’d been feeling since getting off the phone with Oliver. “I really am sorry. I’m just a bit stressed at the moment, and now your dad is mad at me for some…work stuff…” I trail off.

“I’ve noticed. What’s that about?”

“Just…we fought. I said some stuff I shouldn’t have. I was going to apologize when I came down here, but…” I wordlessly gesture at Joe’s empty desk.

Iris nods and begins to say something, but the shrill beeping of my cell phone cuts her off. I give her an apologetic glance as I pick it up to see a text from Barry:

_I’ve got a hit on our meta-human – and something you need to see._

_Ok,_ I quickly type back. _Be up in a sec._

“Sorry,” I quickly tell Iris as I stand. “Duty calls. Let me know if you need help finding a topic, okay?”

“Will do. Now go have fun with your science, nerd,” Iris teases, and I roll my eyes as I practically sprint across the bullpen and take the stairs two at a time before bursting through the doors to the lab. “Barry, whatcha got?”

“An identity, but more importantly, I’ve isolated some skin cells from the sample Cisco lifted off your suit, and there’s something up with these cells,” Barry mutters. “Look.”

I walk over to peer over his shoulder at his computer monitor and then frown at what greeted me. “Oh. That’s not normal.”

“Neither is a man that can Xerox himself,” Barry points out. “Are you sure this came from his knuckles?”

“You know, I’m not _really_ sure,” I drawl. “I was kinda busy _getting hit in the face_ to notice what was hitting me.”

“Sorry I asked,” he huffs. “But back to the point – these cells are naïve. They must act as a foundation for the clone to develop on.”

“The DNA replicates itself from the clone,” I realize. “But – I saw the clones, and the process seems almost instantaneous. How do the cells achieve that much replication that fast?”

Barry ponders this for a moment before sighing. “I don’t know. But Dr. Wells might have an answer, or Caitlin. Let’s go.”

I almost protest – _we do have actual jobs here, jobs that we need to be_ present _for_ – but then I realize just how over our heads we were, and yeah, it was probably better to let the meta-human experts deal with the meta-human, I muse as I grab my bag.

Barry grabs me and the world disappears in a now-familiar blur, and before I can take a deep breath, he skids to a stop in front of STAR Labs, nearly dropping me as he sways dangerously and a wave of lightheadedness sweeps over us both.

“Barry!” I yelp, rushing to steady him. “Are you okay? Are you going to faint?”

“No,” he gasps, blinking rapidly. “No, I just – just a little dizzy. I’m fine.”

“Not nauseous? Wait, no you’re not,” I blink, feeling no nausea coming from Barry. “But do you feel like you’re about to pass out?”

“No,” he repeats, clearer now as the lightheadedness fades. “Seriously, I’m fine. Let’s go.”

I nod but keep a hand on his arm anyway as we make our way into the cortex. Cisco and Caitlin only look mildly surprised to see us, since Barry and I showing up during working hours was becoming more and more of a regular occurrence, and Dr. Wells doesn’t even look remotely surprised – but then again, when was he ever surprised by anything?

I greet everyone with a nod as I set my bag down on the desk. “We’ve got info on our meta-human. I think I know how he clones.”

“Do tell, Ms. Allen,” Wells prompts.

I take a seat on one of the tabletops and recount our findings, explaining how the cells pulled off the clone’s hands weren’t actually skin cells.

“The only thing I can’t figure out,” I conclude, “is how the cloning process happens so fast.”

“Well, there are several ways to increase the rate of mitosis,” Caitlin offers without looking up from her microscope. “You could increase the energy available to the cells – maybe the meta-human has something like you do?”

“It would make sense,” I agree hesitantly, “but would that mean our cloner can hypnotize people too?”

“I highly doubt that,” Wells assures me. “The particle accelerator explosion may have given you both your abilities, but the abilities are not necessarily similar. The dark matter sent out by the explosion put a deposit of energy within each affected person, but the way each meta-human uses that energy varies on a case-by-case basis. In your case, it allows you to influence brain waves, your brother can run at impossible speeds, and our newest meta-human uses the dark matter in his cells for increased cell multiplication.”

“And speaking of our meta,” Barry interjects, “I found an identity: Danton Black.”

“Danton Black…” Cisco quickly types the name into the STAR Labs system, sending the results to one of the monitors. “Bingo! Danton Black, former Stagg Industries employee.”

“He specialized in cloning work,” I mention as I read further down the page. “Organs, specifically, which +would’ve been a fantastic scientific breakthrough if Black hadn’t gone all psycho.”

“It’s kinda ironic, isn't it?” Cisco chuckles slightly. “Black did cloning research, and now he _is_ a clone.”

“If he was experimenting on himself at the time of the explosion, the dark matter could have infused the chemicals with his DNA,” Wells realizes.

“Which explains why he’s going after Stagg,” Barry adds. “The ceremony at CCU last week was to honor _Stagg’s_ work in cloning, not Black’s. If Stagg stole Black’s research, he’s probably going back for revenge.”

“Yeah, but why wait this long?” I wonder. “Black’s employment records show he was fired not long after the explosion. It’s been months – why attack Stagg now?”

“Maybe he was just learning to use his powers?” Caitlin suggests.

“For _nine_ months?” Barry asks skeptically.

“Mr. Allen has a point,” Wells comments. “We can figure out the reason for Mr. Black’s delay later. For now-”

“-we have a problem,” Caitlin says anxiously, unwittingly finishing Dr. Wells’ sentence as she looks up from her sample.

I hop off my perch and shuffle over to her side. “What is it?”

Caitlin doesn’t reply, instead just holding out the petri dish she’d been using to analyze the skin sample, complete with tiny specks on the bottom.

“What the…” I gape. “What is that?”

“That’s the stem cells growing.” Caitlin takes a deep breath. “They’ve become visible.”

“…It’s been five minutes,” Barry says disbelievingly. “Are you sure-?”

“I’m sure,” Caitlin assures him sharply. “They’re growing quickly, but it’s not instantons like you said Black’s clones were.”

I nod, not taking my eyes off the petri dish as if I was expecting a clone the burst forth fully-formed, like something out of a Greek myth. It doesn’t, of course, and the tension in the room slowly drops from ten back to one as its occupants disperse: Barry ambles off towards the treadmill room, Dr. Wells wheels off to parts unknown, and Caitlin doesn’t move from guarding the petri dish; I was just about to keep her company by working on some case files when Cisco calls my names from across the room.

“Come on, I want to show you something,” he chimes, practically bouncing.

“What is it?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

“Something I’ve been working on,” he mutters evasively. “Just _come on_ , dude!”

I roll my eyes but drop my bag anyway, following the other engineer through the curving hallways of the building until he pushes open a heavy door to a very large, very dark space.

 “Cisco?” I call, voice echoing in the dark. “This had better not be a trap.”

“Of course it’s not a trap,” he scoffs from somewhere to my left. “I’m not cruel.” He’s interrupted by a soft _thud_ before the lights turn on with a low hum, illuminating the STAR Labs garage, the centerpiece of which was a gleaming silver motorcycle.

“Oh my god,” I nearly squeal as I bound over and crouch down beside the bike. “Is it done? Is this it?”

“This is it,” Cisco confirms, kneeling on the other side of the motorcycle. “I followed your specs just about to the letter, but I Cisco-fied a few things.”

“Cisco-fied?” I ask, raising an eyebrow and leaning back slightly.

“’Course,” he grins. “I had to make it more awesome, didn’t I?”

I flip him off as I lean over the motorcycle, ghosting my hands over the surface.

The bike was two-toned metal – the gas tank, seat, and front were all the same color as my suit: a shining silver, but muted enough to not be reflective. Everything else, however, was gleaming chrome. The structure of the bike was sleek and thin enough to be aerodynamic, but still thick enough to be able to take a hit, just as I had intended; the engine was completely covered by the chassis, meaning less of a chance that someone lands a critical hit, but there was something important missing.

“Where’s the ignition?”

“There isn't one,” Cisco reveals smugly. “Put your hand here-” he points to the spiral embossed on top of the gas tank “-and watch the magic happen.”

I raise an eyebrow but, in a show of trust more for Cisco’s talent than the man himself, I place my palm on the spiral, jumping slightly as it glows under my hand and the bike rumbles to life. “Whoa.”

“It’s the same biometrics as your batons,” Cisco explains giddily. “And speaking of your batons, put your hand on the side of the gas tank and press.”

I do as instructed, and my eyebrows shoot up as a long, thin drawer pops out of the side of the bike, one of my batons held firmly in a pair of clamps.

“There’s one on each side, just in case you didn’t want to keep them on your suit,” Cisco continues. “It doesn’t affect the gas flow at all, because with the enhanced fuel you wanted to use it needs less fuel anyway.”

I nod and replace the baton, pushing in the drawer and lazily straddling the bike as Cisco rambles about how the front panels were reinforced, just in case I got into an accident, and how the bike would light up at night, how the top speed was somewhere around 400 miles an hour, and how I _really_ needed a name because he needed something to call this latest masterpiece.

“I was thinking the Hypno-mobile,” he suggests. “Or maybe the Hypno-bike-”

Thankfully, my phone interrupts him, and I quickly answer the call. “Hello?”

 _“Ellie!”_ Caitlin yells. _“You need to get to the cortex, now!”_

“What?” I ask, scrambling off the bike and already moving towards the door. “Caitlin, what’s wrong?”

 _“It’s the clone!”_ she pants. _“The clone is gone!”_


	11. In the Blackest of Nights

I burst through the doors of the cortex with Cisco hot on my heels, both of us slightly short of breath and gaping in horror at the scene that greets us.

The lab was in a state of complete chaos: there was overturned furniture everywhere, broken glass littering the floor, and – most importantly – a human-sized hole in one of the walls, which might explain the absence of the clone.

“What happened?” I demand incredulously, making my way over to Barry, who was slumped against one of the intact walls and looked a little peaky. “How did we _lose_ a fully-grown human being?!”

“We didn’t really lose him, per se,” Wells offers as Caitlin carefully checks him over for any bumps or bruises. “It was more of an escape attempt.”

“Really?” I turn to Barry and poke him in the side. “And did you even try to stop him?”

“I was a little busy,” my brother snaps, batting my hand away with an annoyed glance.

“Yes, busy _passing out_ ,” Caitlin retorts as she leaves Dr. Wells’ side and makes her way over to Barry and puts a hand on his pulse point. “Your heart rate still feels a little slow, if you’d just let me take a glucose reading-”

“We don’t have time for that,” Barry argues. It would’ve been more forceful if he hadn’t swayed as he said it, forcing himself to lean against me lest he falls on his face.

“No, but we do have these,” Cisco speaks up from behind me, appearing at my side and handing Barry and I what looked like plastic-wrapped granola bars. “Eat those. They’re packed with calories and should hold you over between meals.”

Barry nods and immediately scarfs his down, and I’m relieved to see the color return to his cheeks; I unwrap my bar a little more cautiously and hesitantly nibble on a corner.

“God,” I cough a moment later. “This tastes like the inside of a used litter box, Cisco.”

“I’m working on the taste, but for right now it works,” Cisco insists. “Wait, does it work?”

I nod, sigh, and reluctantly choke down the rest of the calorie bar, chasing it with a swig from the water bottle Caitlin hands me.

“Now that that matter has been sorted, we need to find our clone,” Wells comments.

“I don’t suppose you put a tracker on him?” I ask Caitlin with a hopeful glance, but she shakes her head.

“There wasn’t time – the clone started moving about a minute after he formed.”

“Well do we have any idea where Captain Clone is going?” Cisco asks. “We need to catch him before he does any damage or makes little baby clones.”

“That’s it!” Barry exclaims. “The clones! When I was at CCU,” he explains to the room at large, “I noticed that whenever the clones spoke, they either spoke as one or were able to finish each other’s sentences. Which means they know what the others are thinking…”

“…and that means they operate under the same brain,” I finish with a flash of realization. “It’s a hive mind. Hives flock to the queen.”

“So all we need to do is find the queen, and we’ll find the hive,” Cisco continues, catching on to my train of thought as he begins typing.

“Black is probably going to go after Stagg again, there can’t be another reason for him to call his clones together,” Wells explains urgently. “Cisco, look for any crimes surrounding Simon Stagg and his company.”

Cisco nods and continues typing for a moment before he looks up. “Yahtzee! There’s been a break-in at Stagg Industries, CCPD is reporting multiple men in black clothing.”

“Stagg Industries – Joe is there,” I gasp as my stomach drops.

“And Black’s on the move,” Wells announces. “Ellie, Barry-”

“On it,” we chorus. Barry and his suit disappear in a bolt of lightning, and I run to grab my suit off its mannequin and slip into a bathroom to get changed, musing that I really needed to find a quicker way to suit up.

Shaking my head as I swing a leg over my bike and pull on my mask and hood, I start the bike up and screech out of the STAR Labs garage. “Does everyone read me?”

_“Loud and clear, Ellie,”_ Dr. Wells’ voice says in my ear. _“Take a left up ahead.”_

I nod and press on the gas a little more. I don’t push the bike to the limit, staying just under 70 miles an hour, but even then the drive to Stagg Industries – across the city from STAR Labs – only takes about two and a half minutes.

I quickly stash my bike in some bushes and hop off, grabbing my batons and switching them on. “Barry?”

There’s a _whoosh_ and Barry suddenly appears in full suit, lightning bolt emblem shining on his suit. _“Here. Are we ready to do this?”_

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. We need to get to Joe,” I stress, tightening my hands around my batons and recollecting every move Oliver had taught me as I look around the parking lot. “Guys, the outside is empty, we’re going to head inside.”

_“Alright, keep your eyes peeled.”_

I give a confirmation as I pick up the pace, Barry following at a normal pace. We slip into the Stagg Industries lobby without being noticed, but that was as far as our luck got us: there were four clones guarding the elevators, and they all rush at Barry, for some reason.

I step in front of my brother to intercept the first clone, catching a punch aimed at Barry’s stomach and violently twisting the clone’s arm behind its back, hearing two cracks as the clone screams. I shove the first clone, now useless, back into the second, who goes down like a bowling pin only to have one of my batons pressed against his chest. The third raises his gun and pulls the trigger, but before I can even hope to dodge, there’s a flash of lighting and I’m across the room.

 “Where did you learn how to fight like that?” Barry asks.

“I, uh…I joined a gym,” I lie quickly, taking a few deep breaths. “Let’s keep moving before more clones show up.”

“Great idea,” Barry agrees before he’s gone with a _whoosh._ I sprint towards the stairs, taking them two at a time and keeping a constant eye out for clones.

I fling open the door to the second floor and take cover behind a cubicle wall as bullets come flying toward me, feeling them pierce the partition behind me, missing me by just a couple of inches.

“ **Everyone stop!** ” I scream, voice echoing around the office floor. “ **Stop shooting and put the guns down and stay _still!_ ”**

Of course, my power works. Everything falls quiet save for the sound of my breathing, and I slowly peek out from behind the wall to see all of the clones – and there were only five, interestingly enough – without their guns, standing stock-still and staring straight ahead at nothing.

Grinning to myself, I leap into the fray, breaking arms and twisting shoulders and kicking in soft spots as I move from clone to clone. I even got to pistol-whip one guy with his own gun, which was fun in a very vindictive way.

“Second floor is clear,” I report once I’m surrounded by unconscious bodies. “But there were only five of them. Barry, where are you and how’s it looking?”

_“I’m right above you, and there were seven up here,”_ Barry informs me. _“I think the number of clones is increasing as we go up.”_

_“Stagg has his office on the tenth floor, at the top of the building. Black has most likely converged on that office and brought the majority of his clones with him, leaving a few behind in an effort to impede your progress,”_ Wells explains.

“So the higher up we go, the harder this is going to get,” I reason as I emerge onto the third floor, jogging over to Barry’s side. “I suggest we stick together from now on.”

“Agreed.” Barry nods. “Any sign of Joe?”

“Not yet,” I sigh as I move towards the stairs again. “He’d better not be hurt.”

Barry doesn’t reply, instead just up the stairs in the trail of lightning. I follow as fast as I could – which wasn’t that fast, comparatively – and arrive on the fourth floor to see a streak of lightning darting from clone to clone, an invisible force punching jaws and faces and sweeping feet out from under the clones.

I snort softly as I taze the nearest clone. “Leaving any for me, showoff?”

_“It’s not my fault I’m faster than you,”_ he replies cheekily. _“No sign of Joe.”_

“Copy that,” I sigh as I side-step another hail of bullets. “ **Drop your gun.** ”

There’s a _clunk_ as the clone’s grip goes slack, and I punch him in the face, causing him to join his gun on the floor.

There were fifteen clones on this floor, and Barry had already taken care of seven of them. I quickly disarm and knock out the remaining six (eight, if you counted the first two) and search the floor for Joe.

“Nothing,” I growl a few minutes later. “Cisco, Caitlin, you’re _sure_ he’s here, right?”

_“His cell signal is coming from Stagg Industries, yes,”_ Cisco insists.

_“Detective West would not have been Black’s primary concern,”_ Wells adds. _“Joe may be held on a lower floor than Black himself.”_

“Well, we’ve got – what, six more floors to go? How many floors are there in this place, anyway?” I huff as I jog up the steps between the fourth and fifth floors.

_“Ten,”_ Caitlin chirps, and I roll my eyes but continue on.

The fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth floors pass in a similar fashion as the first four had – Barry would rush in and decimate about half of the clones, and I would systematically KO the rest, although this got harder and harder to do as the number of clones per floor increased, per Dr. Wells’ prediction. The eighth floor had about twenty-five, I think, and I limped into the eighth-floor stairwell with two black eyes, a split lip, and an ankle that I was fairly sure was sprained. If Caitlin was right about my healing factor, the worst of those should be healed within a day or two, so I wasn’t entirely worried.

“We need to end this soon,” I pant, leaning heavily against the wall. “Preferably _before_ I get my ass whooped again.”

“You seem to be doing fine so far,” Barry argues from the top of the stairwell. “I still don’t know how you fight like that.”

“Told you, I joined a gym.” I take the opportunity to straighten my mask and unstick a few sweaty strands of hair from my face. “Kickboxing. Do you think Joe’s okay?”

Barry blinks at the sudden segue but doesn’t comment beyond, “Yes. It’s only been forty-five minutes since the robbery started, he’s fine.”

I nod and straighten my hood as I push off the wall and walk up the stairs, pushing down the wince at my protesting ankle. “Let’s go.”

Barry nods and kicks the door in with a flash of lightning, unfortunately attracting the attention of the thirty clones on the floor. Thirty quickly turns into forty, and forty quickly turns into fifty copies of Danton Black, all armed and dangerous.

Barry dissolves into a blur of lightning as he stops the first hail of bullets, pausing only long enough to shout, “Go! Find Joe! I’ve got this!”

I was under the impression that he did not, in fact, have this, but I scurry away anyways, taking cover behind a support pillar. “If I was a meta-human ex-scientist hell-bent on getting revenge on my ex-employer, where would I hide my collateral damage?”

_“Um, check the closets?”_ Cisco suggests meekly.

“S’not like I’ve got a better idea,” I mutter under my breath as I creep off to do just that, breaking into the first closet I come across to find nothing but cleaning supplies. The second yields the same results, but with the third, I stumble upon something unexpected.

The third closet is in a narrow hallway, guarded by a tight-knit group of four guards, which immediately struck me as very odd. It stood to reason that if that was just a normal closet, the guards were unnecessary, so there was definitely _something_ in that closet worth protecting, and I was willing to bet that it was Detective Joe West.

I take a deep, slow breath as I lean around the corner. The guards hadn’t noticed me yet, but that was subject to change.

I unhook one of my batons from my belt and flick it on, flinging it straight at the nearest guard’s head, and he goes down in an arc of electricity with a scream. I lunge towards the remaining clones, but as soon as I’m within reach, I find myself slammed against the wall, my back pinned as a second clone raises his gun at my head-

I raise my legs and lash out with the same move that had made Oliver stumble, only this clone was not Oliver Queen and so he goes flying, falling into the wall behind him only to be tazed in the neck a moment later. The third clone gets the gun twisted out of his hands and his wrist broken, followed by a punch to the back of the head. The fourth guard just gets pushed out of the window that was at the end of the hall, because I was fucking tired, okay?

I quickly jimmy the lock and pull the door to the closet, relieved to find Joe bound and gagged but relatively unharmed. I quickly untie his bonds, and he looks up at me with relief coloring his face. He gapes at me, doing his best impression of a goldfish for a tense moment before he manages, “Your eyes...are silver.”

“Uh-huh, they do that sometimes,” I respond dryly. “Come on, we've gotta move.”

Joe and all his years as a cop do not question my orders, even though they were plainly said, and I quickly lead him down through the building, keeping both hands on my batons just in case.

I slip out into the parking lot, reaching back to grab Joe's arm as I turn to face him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I'm fine,” he nods. “But Stagg’s in trouble.”

“I know,” I assure him. “I'm going back to save him, but you need to leave _now_ ,” I inform him urgently. “There's nothing you can do,” I add as he starts to protest. “I am going back in there because _I'm_ the one with superpowers, not _you_ , and there's still nothing you can do to stop me,” I insist firmly. “Go **.** Please.”

Joe nods slowly, pulling me into a quick one-armed hug before pulling away. “At least tell me you'll be careful out there.”

“I'll try,” I promise before backing away and turning around to run back towards the building and clicking on my comms. “Joe's safe. What's the situation with Black?”

_“I've got him – the real him, the prime – upstairs,”_ says Barry breathlessly. _“Everything seems okay, but I'm pretty sure Stagg’s in shock if you want to come-”_ He’s interrupted by a shout and the sound of shattering glass and a shout: _“No!”_

“Barry?” I call as anxiety and fear flood my system – whether it was from me or my brother, I didn’t know, but it was threatening to choke me either way. “Barry!” I shout desperately.

No response. Clenching my hands to keep them from shaking, I switch onto the main comm line. “Barry isn't responding, someone get me his location.”

_“He’s on the south side of the building, Ellie,”_ Dr. Wells informs me calmly. _“Do not panic.”_

_“_ I’ll panic if I want, that’s my brother,” I snap as I bolt towards the location indicated, completely unsure of what I was going to see and totally unprepared for what I find.

_“Don’t do this!”_ Barry pleads as he hangs on to Black, who was dangling out the tenth-story window and struggling to get free. _“Black, don’t do this, please! We can help you-”_

And then Black falls. I’m not quite sure how – maybe Barry let go, maybe Black got free, but before I can decide, instinct grabs hold and I dive out of the way just before Black’s body hits the pavement where I had just been standing with a sickening _crack_ – a sound that was going to haunt me probably forever.

I stay still on the asphalt for what feels like forever, only picking myself up when the telltale _whoosh_ of Barry arriving sounds.

“He’s dead,” he mutters hoarsely.

“I’m guessing so,” I sigh numbly, pulling off my mask. “I mean, guessing by the blood alone-” I pause to swallow the bile that I hadn’t even known was rising in my throat. Police sirens wail in the distance. “You should probably go warn them off. I don’t want to explain this to Singh.”

“But – are you sure?” he asks. “You’d probably be better at…”

I wordlessly nod, and Barry hesitates for only a moment before disappearing in a flash of light. I watch his trail of lightning until it’s no longer visible, glancing down as I feel something warm touch my boot.+

The silver fabric is stained red by the blood creeping over the pavement, a puddle originating from under Black’s head.

I nearly lose my lunch then and there – I nearly lose it all, but Oliver’s words about not yelling and screaming and throwing a fit, even when you break down, come to mind and I take a deep breath and straighten my back.

“Black is dead,” I report solemnly. “He – he jumped. Or something.”

_“The police have undoubtedly been alerted. I’ve already called Mr. Allen back to the lab,”_ Dr. Wells explains. _“You need to evacuate the scene before the police arrive.”_

I glance at Black’s body and then at the flashing lights I could see in the distance and nod, replacing my mask and wiping my boots on the pavement as I hurry to where I’d stashed my bike, quickly turning it on and bolting from the parking lot, only leaving behind a body and my guilty conscience as I fled.


	12. A Drink Between Friends

I was moving entirely on autopilot as I returned to STAR Labs. I was entirely numb as I stripped out of my suit and into one of the locker-room showers, only dimly aware that the water was scalding. After I’ve scrubbed every inch of my body twice, I step out of the shower and pull on some sweats, grabbing a towel for my hair as I make my way back to the cortex, where a local news report was playing on one of the monitors.

_“…in other breaking news, the body of Danton Black, a former employee of Stagg Industries,”_ the reporter was saying. _“The cause of death is still unknown, and the Central City Police Department has declined any further questions. It is still unknown if Black’s death holds any connection to Mr. Stagg’s honoring at Central City University earlier this week…”_

“Do we have to watch this?” I complain as I shuffle in and claim one of the rolling chairs as my own. “It’s not like we don’t know what happened,” I point out bitterly.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Dr. Wells sighs, turning his wheelchair to face me. “If Mr. Black did not want to be saved, then there was no way to truly save him.”

I press my lips into a thin line. “I don’t believe that. There’s always a way.”

Everyone in the room lets out a collective sigh, and I grit my teeth at Dr. Wells’ response.

“You’ll find, Ellie, that when some people break, they cannot be fixed.”

_But I could have fixed him,_ I internally scream, but externally, I just shake my head. “I still don’t believe that, but whatever floats your boat. I’ll be in the workshop if you need me.”

“That’s fine!” Cisco calls after me as I leave the room. “Just use _my_ workshop, giving no regard to my personal wishes! Go ahead, Ellie!”

I grin as I walk away, but it the smile slips off my face as soon as the door to Cisco’s workshop closes behind me. The shock and adrenaline were fading fast, leaving me shaky and unstable and, most importantly, angry – whether at Black, at Stagg, or at myself, I didn’t quite know.

I stalk forward and kick over a chair that probably belonged to Cisco, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. All I could think about was Danton Black, his dead body, the blood on the pavement and on my shoes-

I violently shake my head to clear it, storming towards the desk and wincing as my ankle protests the movement – it would be healed within a day, but for now, it still hurt. An ice pack would be the best solution, but getting an icepack would mean going back through the cortex, and that was not something that was going to happen.

“Damn it,” I growl, slamming a hand down on the desk and rattling a pencil cup. “Damn it, I could’ve…I should’ve…”

I wheeze out a breath and swipe an angry hand across my eyes, blinking the world back into focus. My eyes roam around the room for a moment before landing on my bag – I’d left it in here earlier, before Cisco showed me the motorcycle and the clone went missing and Black-

I swallow and cross the room, opening my bag if only to have something to do and rooting through it, finding my wallet, the keys to the lab, about five of Cisco’s calorie bars, a few odds and ends, my phone…and a train ticket to Starling City, dated earlier that week.

Starling City.

Oliver.

It was as if a lightning bulb had gone off over my head - if anyone in the world could understand my grief, it would be the Starling City Vigilante. Jolting into action, I re-pack my bag and sling it over my shoulder, leaving the workshop and taking the long way to the garage, where my bike is still where I’d left it, haphazardly parked in a spot near the door. I mount it and pull out of the garage without a second thought.

* * *

Going 400 miles an hour – on a motorcycle, no less – is definitely an interesting experience, to say the least. Thanks to my new super-bike, I reach Starling City an hour and a half after leaving STAR Labs.

I pull to a stop in an alley behind Verdant, glancing around as I dismount and make my way inside, grabbing the two coffee cups from the holder stashed on the back of my bike. I’d called Oliver not long after leaving, if only to make sure that I didn’t walk into the middle of an international incident – because Oliver did tend to cause those – and decided to make a pit stop along the way.

I silently make my way through the club and to the basement, punching in the code that Oliver has disclosed and jogging down the stairs, only to freeze half way upon realizing that Oliver was not alone.

The brunette woman – Laurel – looks up at me with a deer-in-the-headlights expression. “Um…who are you?”

“Um…” I gape. “Uh, er-” I glance at Oliver. “Hi,” I squeak. “Wasn’t expecting you to have company. I can go…”

“No, Ellie, you’re fine,” Oliver assures me with a small smile. “Come on in. Ellie, this is Laurel Lance, Assistant District Attorney; Laurel, this is Ellie Allen, she’s with the CCPD and a friend of mine.”

I hop down the stairs and offer one of the coffee cups to Oliver, turning to extend a hand to Laurel. “Hi. I’m, uh, I’m sorry about Sara.”

“Thanks,” she stammers. “How did you…how did you know about Sara?”

“Ellie’s a CSI,” Oliver explains from across the room. “You wanted the best people on her case, and I got the best people.”

I duck my head and blush, but Laurel ignores me and speaks directly to Oliver.

“And how does she know about all of…this?” she asks, gesturing to the Arrowcave.

“That would be my other job,” I interject, stepping forward. My energy spikes and I can almost feel my eyes turn silver, as if the look on Laurel’s face wasn’t enough of an indication. “I’m from Central City and I can hypnotize people, which is nice, but not very good in a fight, so Oliver’s training me, and-”

Laurel cuts off my ramble before it can get any worse. “Wait, you’re training her?”

“Yes,” Oliver sighs. “Laurel, we talked about this…”

“No, you talked,” Laurel argues. “I don’t understand why you’re willing to train other people – a _stranger_ , no less – but not me.”

“I don’t want you getting hurt,” Oliver snaps, and I shuffle back a few steps until my back hits a table. “This life is dangerous, Laurel.”

“And, yet, you are willing to include people from other cities in it, but not one of your closest friends,” Laurel says sardonically. Her eyes shift to me, and I flinch back.

“Whatever,” she spits. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do. It was nice to meet you, Ellie.”

The door slams shut behind her, the sound bouncing around the room.

I risk a glance at Oliver, whose shoulders were tight. “Was…was it something I said?”

“No,” he sighs. “Laurel was Sara’s sister. When Sara, the Canary, died, she left Laurel her jacket, and now Laurel’s gotten it in her head that she can be another Canary, another vigilante,” he explains, voice carefully void of any and all emotions. “She asked me to train her. I said no. I don’t want her getting hurt.”

“That’s a good reason,” I agree with a nod. “But I’m different because…?”

“You’re already in this life, whether I like it or not,” he points out. “Like you said – you’ve got superpowers, what else can you be expected to do with them?” He gives me a wry smile, which I return before he continues.

“But Laurel’s not involved, not fully. I already got her sister killed – _twice_ – and her dad has cardiac problems because of the stress…” he shakes his head. “I can’t put anyone else in danger. I won't.”

“I know,” I murmur, reaching out without thinking to put a hand on his shoulder. We both tense for a moment, but the moment recedes as Oliver turns to look at me.

“That’s as noble a reason as any,” I continue softly, “but give your friends – your team – the credit they deserve. After all, you’re a fantastic teacher – who better to teach Laurel to be a badass?”

He nods silently and moves to busy himself with something on another table. “Speaking of me teaching people, I’m judging that’s not what you came for. Why did you come – do you have something on Sara?”

I sigh and grab my coffee cup, moving over to take a seat on the stairs. “No. I’m sorry, I don’t, it’s just – STAR Labs is – was – dealing with a new meta, and he kinda fucked me up-”

“What?” Oliver demands, whirling around to give me a concerned look. “What – are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“Physically? No,” I assure him as I pull a few sugar packets from my pocket and dump them in my coffee cup. “Mentally…is another story.”

Oliver nods and rolls his chair closer to where I was sitting. “Start from the beginning.”

I nod and take a sip of my coffee, sloshing it around as I look for a place to begin. “Do you remember the cloner that kicked my ass?”

Oliver nods, and I take that as a sign to continue.

“His name – the cloner’s – was Danton Black. He wasn’t evil or anything, he just wanted revenge because Simon Stagg is a self-aggrandizing dick,” I explain slowly. “We found who he was and how to beat him, and Barry and I tracked him down to Stagg Industries.”

“And…I’m guessing it didn’t go too well, or else you wouldn’t have driven 600 miles just to come and talk to me.”

I give a minute nod and clasp my hands together, leaning forward to rest my hands on my elbows. “We were supposed to save him. The plan was to save Black, because – because Barry and I are supposed to be the heroes, we’re supposed to save people. I…was supposed to save him, and I didn’t, and now…” I release a slow breath. “And now he’s dead.”

“There wasn’t anything you could’ve done.”

“Don’t say that!” I snap. “You weren’t there, Oliver.”

“I know, but if I was, I would’ve said the same thing I’m saying now,” he says forcefully. “You can’t save everyone, Ellie!”

“I don’t want to save everyone!” I argue. “I just want to save _someone_! I’ve gone up against two meta-humans so far, and both of them are now dead.”

“And you couldn’t have changed either of those outcomes.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I argue, voice trembling. “Mardon, sure, I’ll give you that; he was about to shoot me so Joe shot him instead. But Black?” My voice cracks. “I could have saved Black. I _should_ have saved Black, because that’s my _goddamned job!”_

“I…what do you mean?” Oliver asks. “Ellie…”

I shrink into myself slightly, squeezing my eyes shut before I look back at Oliver. “Do you remember what I told you about my powers? I said – I said I hypnotize people, right?” He nods. “And I don’t exactly know what that means, but so far it means that I make people do things…that they don’t necessarily want to,” I explain, trailing off at the shocked look on Oliver’s face.

Abandoning my coffee, I get up and begin to pace again. “And before you say anything, yes, I have thought about what that could mean, but all I can think about right now is that I should be able to stand next to someone that’s about to jump off a building and say, _‘no. Don’t do this. Step down from that ledge.’”_ I take a deep breath and cross my arms. “And I didn’t do that for Black. If I’d been on that roof – if I’d just been faster – I could have saved Danton Black, but instead, I just stood there and I _watched him die.”_

The last sentence crackles into a sob, and I squeeze my eyes shut, unable to stop the tears that were now flowing down my cheeks.

Elsewhere in the room, there was the sound of a chair sliding across the floor and then soft footsteps before Oliver tugs me into a gentle hug. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

To be honest, the mere notion that Oliver Queen, of all people, was currently hugging me would have sent me into shock if I hadn’t been halfway there already. There were a million things I could’ve said, but what makes it past the tears is, “I never pegged you for much of a hugger.”

“It’s different around my friends,” he mutters quietly. “Although Dig always does say I’m a sucker for a crying woman, so who knows?”

“Mm,” I agree. In the back of my mind, some small part of me realized that we’d left the duration of a friendly hug behind about five seconds ago, but the larger part of me didn’t care: Oliver was warm and his jacket was soft and he smelled good, so social convention could go jump in a lake.

“You can’t save everyone,” Oliver advises, not releasing me as he speaks. “Ellie, you’re just starting out and you’re still coming to grips with your abilities. No one’s expecting you to have a handle on it all right away – no one but yourself. And, yes, Danton Black is dead, but the next time you face this situation, you’ll be ready.”

“Damn right I will,” I mumble into his shoulder. “I’m gonna build a grappling hook or something – I’ll be scaling buildings better than you in no time.”

“I’d like to see you try,” he scoffs dryly, finally stepping back. “You can’t get the kind of training I did.”

“Yeah, well, you know what they say about the student beating the master,” I tease, wiping the dried tears from my face. I felt like I always did after expelling any large amount of emotion – completely spent, but in an almost good way. My head hurt, my chest ached, and I was bone-weary, but at the same time, I felt significantly lighter.

Sighing to myself, I grab my long-forgotten coffee cup and toss it in the trash. “I still feel like shit, but less like shit. And I really am sorry for bursting in here and dumping my problems on you. You’ve got your own shit to deal with.”

“You’re helping with that too,” Oliver reminds me. “The evidence from the…murder will be in your hands soon.”

I nod and take a seat on one of the tables. “And speaking of evidence, where’s the, uh, the body?”

“Upstairs in a freezer,” Oliver admits, voice monotone, after a moment of hesitation. “We didn’t know what to do with it yet.”

I worry my lip between my teeth for a moment before sighing again. “Okay, as loathe as I am to further entrench myself in this whole mess, I can give you tips on how to safely dispose of the body.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” I shake my head. “I can’t believe I’m actually having this conversation. God, I need a drink.”

“What do you want?”

“What?”

“To drink. What do you want?”

“Oh, uh.” I blink. “I like vodka. Do you have vodka?”

“I do,” Oliver confirms, getting up to pull a bottle and two glasses from a cabinet, pouring two healthy servings.

“First you ask a girl for a favor, then you hold her while she cries, and then you plan to get her plastered. Very Machiavellian of you,” I tease lightly, taking the glass anyway and tapping it against his. “Cheers.”

I take a small sip and wince at the burn traveling down my throat, coughing as I set my glass down next to me. “Okay, to get back on topic – the body has been decaying for a few days, so you’re going to have to wrap it in some heavy-duty sheeting, maybe a tarp…”

* * *

After forty-five minutes’ worth of everything I could remember from college and my training courses, I finish with, “…and then you should burn the freezer. Burn the whole thing, and then the ashes, and then scatter the ashes in a place that is very, very far away from here.”

Oliver nods, and I take a moment to lift my glass for another sip, slightly dismayed to find it empty. More upsetting, however, was the fact that I didn’t feel affected – _at all._ Not even the slightest buzz, which – after drinking straight vodka – was more than a little odd.

“You look confused,” Oliver comments.

“Yeah, I-” My brow wrinkles. “I’m not feeling anything. From the alcohol, I mean. Can you pour me a shot please?”

Oliver raises an eyebrow at the request but complies, pouring a little more alcohol in my glass before handing it back to me. I take it with a grateful nod and knock the shot back with experience born of a misspent few years in college, coughing and sputtering for a moment as the vodka burns its way down my throat.

And then…nothing. It was like the vodka suddenly disappeared, like I’d never even taken a drink in the first place. Except that I could taste the vodka on my tongue, so I _had_ consumed it – this was more like someone had simply sped up my body’s absorption rate.  

_Sped up._

“Of course,” I breathe as the dots begin to connect themselves. “Of course, I’m an idiot.”

Across the room, Oliver mutters something I can’t hear, and then asks, louder, “What is it?”

“My metabolism,” I explain, rubbing my forehead. “It’s – Barry and I, the two of us, we have accelerated metabolisms because of the whole…powers thing. That means a few things: one, I need to consume upwards of 12,000 calories a day. Two, Cisco made these calorie bars and the powder you saw earlier. Three, apparently, is that I can’t get drunk. My system burns through the alcohol too fast.” I hold up my glass and glare at it. “This fucking _sucks._ ”

“I…should you go back to STAR Labs and report this?” Oliver asks uncertainly.

I consider this for a moment before shaking my head. “It’s not a big revelation or anything. I don’t feel any different, so it can probably wait. However,” I add, standing up, “I should probably head back anyway; you’ve probably got work to do.”

“I can work around you,” Oliver protests, standing up as I do. “Ellie, you’ve got around ten ounces of pure Russian vodka in your bloodstream, I am not letting you drive.”

I roll my eyes and huff. “God, you’re as bad as Barry. I’m fine, Oliver, I swear.”

“Uh-huh. And speaking of Barry, he’d kill me if you went out there and crashed on some deserted back road.”

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of my brother,” I scoff dryly.

“I’m not,” Oliver defends and then shrugs. “I’m just saying that if you were Thea – my sister – I know what _I_ would do if someone let her drink and drive.”

“I’m not your sister.”

“Yeah, but you’re my friend, and I still don’t want to see you dead,” he challenges. “I can buy you a train ticket or I can drive you home, but both would take several hours and if you want to get any sleep tonight, you can crash here,” he suggests, but to be honest, it didn’t sound like much of a request.

My eyebrows slowly rise into my hairline as I narrow my eyes. “Like I said…Machiavellian.”

“No ulterior motives. I swear.” Oliver nods towards a cot in the corner of the Arrowcave that I hadn’t previously noticed. “Take my bed, I’ll probably be working tonight.”

I make a disbelieving noise but it ends on a surprised note as I fully notice not only the cot but also the two duffel bags and even a fern (which, what?) in the same corner.

“Have – have you been living down here?” I ask incredulously.

“Well, after Queen Consolidated got taken from my hands, so did the Queen Estate, and I’ve been too preoccupied to find somewhere new,” Oliver explains as he does his best to clean the corner, kicking the bags under the cot.

“Right. Well, whenever you’re in Central City next, please know my apartment has a perfectly good couch. And a kitchen, which you seem to be lacking,” I comment, glancing around the room. “But for now, I’ll crash on your cot – if you _insist._ ”

“I do,” he confirms, tossing me a blanket. I take it and plop down on the cot, toeing my shoes off and stretching out on my back.

“Thank you, Oliver,” I mumble as I close my eyes. My day was finally catching up with me, and it was exhausting – the last thing I was aware of before sleep claimed me completely was a soft voice and the sound of fading footsteps.


	13. Fiery Conflict

I’m not quite sure what woke me up the next morning, but my best guess was the fact that the Arrowcave was completely silent. It was unnerving – Oliver struck me as the type to rise with the sun, if not before it, so I would have expected him to be awake and moving around. If it had been anyone else, I would’ve chalked it up to them not wanting to wake me, but I’ve seen the Arrow move silently before.

I blink the last of the sleep out of my eyes and kicked the blanket off, reaching over to pick my glasses up from where I’d put them last night. As the world comes into focus, I find that the club’s basement is, in fact, empty; the Arrow suit was in its place, so Oliver wasn’t on patrol, but his bow and quiver were missing, so I guessed that he was off doing whatever it was that bow-wielding ex-billionaire secret vigilantes did with their weapons whenever they weren’t taking down the bad guys.

Suddenly the silence is pierced by a shrill ringing, and I nearly jump off the cot as I glance at my cell phone, forgotten on one of the tables. Barry was calling, I observed as I walked over. And if the screen was correct, then this was the fifteenth time he had done so.

I blow a slow breath out through my nose as I answer the call. “Hello?”

 _“Finally, you answer!”_ he rants. _“Where the hell have you been?!”_

“Good morning, Barry, hello to you too,” I greet sarcastically.

 _“This isn't funny,”_ he growls. _“No one has any clue where you have been all night. You left STAR Labs without telling anyone, and you didn’t come home. After what happened with Stagg, you had everyone terrified – Cisco and Caitlin are freaked out, Joe was two seconds away from sending officers after you, and I was one missed call away from having Cisco track your cell.”_

I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose. I got the feeling that if Barry and Oliver had their way, I would be enclosed in a bubble for the rest of my life – and that wasn’t even _mentioning_ Joe’s protective streak.

“I’m _fine_ , Bear. I’m with a friend.”

 _“Bullshit,”_ he snaps, and I link in surprise – between the two of us, I was the potty-mouth, not Barry. _“We have the same friends, and for the most part, they’re all within this city, which you are not. I’ve checked. So, again – where the_ hell _are you?!”_

“Starling City.”

_“Starling – are you with Oliver?”_

I glance around the Arrowcave before quickly lying, “No. Oliver doesn’t even know I’m here.” Technically, that last part wasn’t even a lie – Oliver didn’t know I was here _right now_. He was probably counting on my leaving as soon as I woke up. “I’m not here because of him.”

 _“Then why are you in Starling City?”_ Barry demands once again. _“You weren’t with – oh, God, please tell me you weren’t with your friends from college.”_

I don’t reply, mainly out of shock, but my brother takes it as a confirmation.

 _“Ellie-”_ Barry trails off, sounding strangled. _“Damn it. I’m coming to get you,”_ he announces.

“No, you're not,” I argue without hesitation. “I brought my bike. I’m coming home, but it’ll take about an hour and a half.”

 _“Fine. I’ll meet you at STAR Labs,”_ he agrees curtly, and the line goes dead with a _click_.

I sigh as I stuff my phone back in my pocket, quickly collecting my bag and making sure everything in the Arrowcave was just as I found it before heading for the stairs, slipping through the empty club and out to the alley, where my bike was waiting.

I quickly straddle it and press my hand to the emblem on the gas tank, quirking a smile as it purrs to life. Backing out of the alleyway, I waste no time in finding my way back onto the highway and gunning it back to Central City.

When I pull up to the gates in front of STAR Labs, Barry is waiting, true to his word. Only, he’s sparking with anger – literally sparking. Tiny bursts of lightning were arcing all over his body.

I park my bike without comment, climbing off and turning around to face my brother. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he asks. “You were gone all night. _All. Night._ ”

“I know. I have a good reason.”

“Which is?” Barry challenges, raising an eyebrow.

“I…” I open my mouth, only to shut it again.

“You can’t even give me an explanation,” he accuses, crossing his arms.

“I don’t _owe_ you an explanation,” I fire back, straightening my back. “I don’t understand what’s gotten you so worked up, Barry-”

 _“_ You!” he shouts. “It’s you! You’ve been acting weird for weeks – disappearing suddenly and not telling anyone where you’re going. Not coming back for _hours_. And did I mention that when you’re off doing…whatever it is that you do-” he makes a vague gesture, “-I can still feel your pain? Ellie, you’re getting beat up. Multiple times.”

“Twice,” I correct sharply.

“Really?” He lets out a humorless laugh that reminded me a laugh track, which I’d read somewhere was really people from the 1950s, so if Barry’s laugh reminded me of dead people-

“A week ago, it felt like you had gotten mugged,” Barry argues, unwittingly pulling me back on track. “Several times. With a baseball bat.”

“Okay, no, there were no baseball bats involved,” I deny. “And I’m fine, see? My ankle’s even healed by now, so why do you care?”

“ _Why do I care?_ ” Barry repeats incredulously. “You asked me to! Remember when we were fighting Mardon, and you said, ‘we do this together or not at all’? Am I the only one that remembers that conversation?”

“That was for when we’re being _superheroes,_ Barry, not for tracking my every move,” I snap, voice rising with every word. “I’m a grown woman, in case you’ve forgotten, and I can take care of myself.”

“You say that, but then you go and spend as much time in Starling City as you did in college, doing who-knows-what and not telling anyone. Are you seeing a pattern here, or is it just me?”

“Oh my god,” I snarl. “Will you stop? You’re acting like a five-year-old. I am an adult. You are an adult. We are both adults, and we’re allowed to lead our own lives.”

“We never have before,” he argues.

“Oh, I see.” A humorless sound, somewhere between a chuckle and a frustrated sob, bubbles out of my throat. “You can’t handle us not being attached at the hip like we were when we were kids. Newsflash, Barry – we haven’t been kids for seven years now. Longer, if you count emotional maturity.”

“It’s not that!” he shouts. “I just want you to stop lying to me!”

“And I want you to trust me, so it looks like neither of us is getting what we want!” I roar. “And it looks like we’re done here, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m going home.”

I turn around and walk back towards my bike, but Barry’s voice stops me in my tracks.

“I’ll tell Joe.”

Three words. Three words were all it took for anger to explode in my head like an atomic bomb. Joe didn’t approve of me spending time in Starling City – he never had. If he knew I was there now, for whatever reason, my foster-father would keep me inside Central City, come hell or high water. And Joe had friends within the SCPD – I would be kept out by force if necessary.

Barry was willing to bring the police in to keep me from entering Starling City.

A new wave of anger slams into me as I whirl around to face my brother. “ **Don’t you dare** ,” I shout, completely unaware that my voice was echoing louder than before, each word like a crack of thunder.

“ **You have no right to bring Joe into this** ,” I growl. “ **No right!** ”

Barry grits his teeth as he begins sparking even more violently. “You’ve never cared about what he said anyway, so what would it change? Dad would-”

Something snaps as I lunge forward, slamming my fist into Barry’s face hard enough to crack something.

“Don’t you dare mention Dad!” I pant, lips twisted into a snarl. “ ** _Don’t you dare_** _-”_

I’m cut off by a muffled cry, and I look over to see Barry clutching his head with one hand and his nose, which was crooked and gushing blood. But my brother straightens up anyway, opening eyes that were bloodshot and fading from silver to green.

“I guess you aren't shaping up to be a hero after all,” he whispers, his words distorted slightly, before turning and walking away at a completely normal pace, leaving me standing in the parking lot alone and torn between the ice settling in my veins and the fire raging in my gut.

.

For the next week, Barry and I didn’t talk to each other. The memory of our screaming match hung between us like a giant pink elephant – I wanted to resolve things, I really did, but whenever I looked at my brother my anger spiked and his parting words echo in my head, so things did not get resolved.

I had no doubt that everyone around us had noticed the frosty atmosphere – I saw Singh’s face whenever he walked into a dead-silent lab, or the looks Cisco and Caitlin traded when we smoothly avoided each other at STAR Labs, and I could feel Iris’ concerned gaze on my back whenever we were in the same room as each other.

Besides being uncomfortable, the tension was incredibly hard to work around, as we found out a few days after Danton Black – or Multiplex, as Cisco posthumously dubbed him – died.

It all started when the Darbinyan crime family – the entire thing – was killed in one fell swoop. Barry and I ruled the deaths as a mass case of strangulation by way of poison gas, but everything was too systematic to be human. Our gasser turned out to be ex-Darbinyan thug named Kyle Nimbus – only he wasn’t the gasser, he was the gas. And, according to the justice system, he was dead, so there was that little hurdle to get over.

Dead or not, meta-human or not, we did eventually manage to get the drop on Nimbus, but not after a judge died, Joe nearly died ( _again_ ), and Barry nearly died, which nearly gave me a heart attack, no matter how mad I was at him. Also, I nearly suffocated while being able to breathe just fine, which was not something I wanted to repeat any time soon.

I will admit that it was harder to take down Nimbus – Cisco granted him the moniker of “the Mist” – while not speaking to my partner in said operation, but we did so anyway, and Nimbus got carted away to our nifty little Pipeline-turned-prison, which I was pretty sure didn’t follow a single one of the Geneva Conventions.

However, I wish I could say that Kyle Nimbus was my biggest problem. I designed a grappling gun, just like I told Oliver I would – it took two days and looked kind of like a pistol, only with a longer barrel, thicker grip, two thousand feet of super-strong cable and the ability to lift five hundred pounds.

I made damned sure that whatever happened to Black would never happen again. Not on my watch.

And speaking of promises, Oliver kept his – a box full of evidence showed up at STAR Labs the day after Black died. It contained three bloodstained arrows, countless biological samples, a hard drive with a 3D model loaded on it, a recording of what Laurel – the only witness – had seen, and a note that simply read: _“Do your best.”_

And so I did. Every day for a week, I went to work, patrolled the streets of the city, and then took off my uniform to go _back_ to work and slave over Sara’s case. I made progress – Sara was shot by the arrows, there was nothing strange in her blood at the time of her death, and she’d broken a leg by falling off a ledge after she was shot – but all of it was prior knowledge to Team Arrow.

I reported my findings to Oliver on each of my two visits to Starling City over the course of that week. Oliver had taken it upon himself to teach me parkour, reportedly to decrease the chances of me tripping over my own feet during a fight. It was useful, actually, since I hadn’t gotten around to testing my grappling gun yet.

By the time the end of the week rolled around, everything seemed to be winding down, settling into a relative state of calm.

And then Felicity Smoak walked through the doors of the CCPD and directly into Yours Truly.

“Allen!” Singh scolds from where he’d been talking to another officer nearby. “How many times do I have to tell you to watch where you’re going? Ma’am, are you alright? I apologize for my CSI.”

“Oh, no, no, I’m fine,” the hacker quick assures him as she helps me pick up the papers I’d dropped. “I do that all the time, it’s no big deal. Ellie, you okay?”

I nod as Singh walks away, muttering under his breath. Felicity watches him go before turning to me with a curious look on her face. “Are all your coworkers like that, or is it just him?”

“Let’s just say I’m not exactly the Chosen One around here,” I sigh as I put the last paper back on top of the stack and pick it up. “Come on, the lab’s this way.”

I quickly escort her up the stairs and into the lab, where Barry was at his desk, bent over an analysis and only looking up when I drop the stack of files on his desk with only an expectantly raised eyebrow. Barry takes them in the same fashion, blatantly ignoring me and shuffling the papers with more force than was strictly necessary.

I sit back down at my desk without a word. From her spot near the door, Felicity makes an odd noise. “Uh, hey, Barry. Nice to see you too.”

“What? Oh, hey, Felicity,” Barry says chipperly, a smile blooming on his face as he walks over to greet her. “It’s great to see you! What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you two, and apparently I came right on time,” she announces. “What is going on with the two of you?”

Barry doesn’t answer her, and I shake my head and I stand up again. “I’ll explain everything.” I motion for her to follow as I leave the room – again, without a word to my brother – and out onto the mezzanine.

Felicity’s heels click against the marble floors as she rushes to keep up with me. “Why do I feel like I just stepped into the middle of a tug-of-war?”

“’Cause you did,” I sigh, leaning against the railing. “Barry is mad because last week, I spent a night in Starling City.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me you were in town, I could’ve stopped by.”

“I was with Oliver.”

“Oh, okay, I – wait,” she gasps. Her jaw drops. “Did you spend a night with Oliver or _with_ Oliver?”

“What do you – _no!”_ I yelp as I realize what she’s insinuating. “No, I didn’t – Felicity! I didn’t sleep with Oliver!”

“Okay, there is no need to bite my head off,” she soothes. “I just figured, what with the whole UST-avoidance thing you two have going on, and not to mention the fact that I _know_ Oliver trains shirtless, and if you’ve seen that-”

I cut her off as I continue walking – I had a feeling that this conversation was not one I wanted to have with all of the Central City Police Department listening in. “Felicity, there is nothing going on between me and Oliver. I don’t care what you see, or what you _think_ you see – there’s nothing that platonic friendship.”

“Okay, okay.” She raises her hands in surrender. “So, if you and Oliver aren't doing the nasty and Barry has no reason to be chauvinistically defensive of you, then why is he mad?”

I don’t give her an answer, instead resting a hand on her back and not-so-subtly guiding her out of the precinct.

“Oliver has been training me,” I explain once we’re out of earshot. “Teaching me how to fight, teaching me how to be agiler, how to use my weapons-”

“How to _be_ Oliver Queen,” Felicity surmises.

“Well, the Arrow, more specifically, but yes,” I agree, stuffing my hands in my pockets as we approach a park. “I’m keeping it under wraps, of course, just like everything else. Barry’s not used to me keeping secrets and I can’t tell him the truth, so we’ve reached an impasse.”

“An impasse?” she repeats disbelievingly. “What I saw back there was not an _impasse_ , Ellie. What else happened?”

“I…may have punched him,” I admit sheepishly.

“You _punched_ Barry? _You_ punched _Barry_?” Felicity gawks. “But he’s like a puppy! Clumsy and fluffy and everyone loves him – you punched a puppy!”

I scoff and roll my eyes, but then pause. “If Barry’s a puppy, then what am I?”

“A kitten,” she answers nearly immediately. “You’re really cute, but you’ve got claws.”

“Um…thanks?”

“And speaking of claws,” she continues, “I want to see them. It.”

“See…” I blink and tilt my head. “See what?”

“Your claws! I mean, your powers, duh, not your claws. Unless your powers gave you claws?” she asks eagerly.

I laugh and shake my head. “No. No claws.”

“Then can I see?”

“Uh…yeah.” I rock back on my heels. “Um…okay. Here, name something you’d never do under your own free will. Something simple, like hopping on one foot or reciting the alphabet backward or something.”

“Okay…” Felicity considers for a moment before coming up with, “I know it’s clichéd, but I’m not a huge fan of acting like a chicken.”

I swallow the laugh that threatens to escape my lips, but I can’t fight the smile that appears on my face.

“It’s not funny!” she whines. “I had this really bad stage fright when I was in fifth grade and I was really scared that I’d start making a fool of myself up in front of the class.”

“Alright, alright. Look,” I sigh solemnly. “If you really don’t want to do this, don’t ask me to do it.”

“No, I’m fine,” she assures me. “I’m a grown-up, I can handle it. Hit me with your best shot.”

“If you say so,” I chuckle. I take a deep breath and relax, straightening my spine and rolling my shoulders.

I close my eyes green. I open them silver.

“ **Cluck like a chicken** ,” I command Felicity, and her eyes turn silver just before-

_“Bawk! Bawk! Ba-bawk! Bawk-Baaaaaawk!”_

I nearly keel over laughing, clutching my stomach and gasping for air. We – or, more accurately, Felicity – were beginning to attract some odd looks from bystanders in the park, so I decided it was time to end my little ‘spell’.

Only after capturing a few precious seconds of video, though.

“Okay – okay, **stop** ,” I wheeze. “ **Stop.** ”

Felicity suddenly cuts herself off, blinking her eyes, which were blue again, and looking at me in amazement. “Wow. That was…amazing.”

“Right?” I enthuse. “I mean, I’m still getting the hang of it, but…yeah.” I spread my hands. “That’s what I can do.”

Felicity grins and begins to say something, but she’s interrupted by my phone beeping.

“And speaking of what I can do,” I sigh, “that’s probably work…” I fish my phone out of my pocket and glance at the screen. “Or not.” I blink at a text from Cisco – _armed truck robbery on 45th, get there ASAP._

I look up at Felicity and grin. “Come on, we need to get to STAR Labs. There’s something you’re going to want to see.”


End file.
